Heated Storm Yields a Wild Horse's Heart
by rewind gone nuts
Summary: Sometimes, the smallest change can have a big impact. In the world we all know, a summer shower saw Ranma the girl and Genma the panda arrive, to the relief of Akane Tendo and the dismay of her elder sibling Nabiki, who was looking forward to a cute boyfriend. But what happens if Ranma arrives as a boy instead, to Nabiki's delight?
1. Through A Haze of Steam, Two Hearts Meet

**Author's Notes:**

It has been a long, LONG time since I wrote fanfiction. I honestly don't know what to say. But I found a new partner, and now I'm hoping to get back into the game, so I hope folks will enjoy this. At the least, I had to do something to break up this rut of content I'm seeing here on FFN.

So, why this idea? Because I honestly can't remember the last time that I've ever seen somebody explore this idea and its untapped potential. We know Nabiki was the only Tendo girl looking forward to Ranma's arrival in the first episode/chapter - she was actively hoping to get engaged to a cute guy. And was very angry over her boyfriend turning out to be a busty young girl instead. So, what might have happened if that troublesome little curse hadn't reared its ugly head until AFTER Nabiki and Ranma were formally betrothed?

This fic is my interpretation of what would have happened. I hope you all enjoy it.

* * *

 _ **Chapter 1: Through A Haze of Steam, Two Hearts Meet**_

* * *

Genma Saotome plodded dourly through the streets of the Nerima district in Tokyo, scowling as he went. Though the familiarity of his environs should have brought him great comfort, for this little corner of Tokyo hadn't changed much in the years since he had last been here, he barely noticed his old stomping grounds. Genma was annoyed.

He was also currently a giant panda, but the two facts were not as closely related as one might think.

No, the true cause of his discontent had to do with the voluptuous teenage girl squirming angrily atop his shoulder, smacking the back of his head with her fist from time to time for emphasis. Thankfully, the awkward angle prevented her from putting any real force behind the blows, and the thick fur and solid bone of his temporary body absorbed them harmlessly. But it did nothing to protect his sensitive ears from the onslaught of verbal violence as his currently female son, Ranma Saotome, subjected him to a litany of all the profanity and insults he had picked up over a lifetime of traipsing around the rougher parts of eastern civilization.

Genma was not what most people would call a hot-tempered sort of man. He honestly preferred to avoid confrontation, which was more common amongst martial artists than you might think. But even he had his limits, and as he listened to Ranma with equal parts morbid fascination and mortification, something inside of him /snapped/.

With an angry roar, he threw his part-time daughter to the ground against a nearby fence and then stomped up to loom over her, one finger pointed at her like the wrath of an angry god. "Boy! I've had about enough of your attitude! I am your father and you will do as I say!" he growled.

Instead of acting cowed, Ranma snorted indelicately and glared up at him. "Hey, pop, you forget that I don't speak panda?" she snapped.

Genma froze, standing there in silence as a gentle breeze whistled past with perfect ironic timing. Then he slapped one paw against the top of his head, fingers curling so that his claws raked through the fur as he dragged it down the length of his snout. Curse this stupid curse!

Glancing around, he spotted his salvation; a wandering tea-vendor, with a kettle of hot water bubbling away on the burner mounted on his little cart. Snarling, he threw Ranma a dirty look and what he hoped was a menacing gesture to stay put or else, and then headed to the vendor's stall. Hoping brazenness would stun the man into docility, he snatched the kettle and loped back to Ranma as quickly as possible. To his relief, the tea vendor obviously saw no reason to pick a fight with an eight foot tall panda over a kettle of hot water.

Lumbering back to Ranma, Genma poured half of the contents over himself, growling and grimacing as the heat burned its way through his panda form's thick coat, steam wafting from his now-human scalp. Once he trusted himself to speak, he glared at Ranma and once more pointed an imposing finger at the teen. "I said, we are going to the Tendo Dojo and that is final!"

"Why are you so worked up about this stupid engagement business anyway?!" Ranma snapped back. "Hello, do you really think they're going to want anything to do with me when I show up looking like this? What, were you just going to hope they didn't realize that the BOY they were supposed to be marrying was sporting his own killer rack?" She grabbed her cleavage with her hands and made a show of groping it, hefting it in a way that made Genma shudder; that was just too creepy to see a girl his son's age doing, never mind seeing his actual son doing it!

"I have my reasons!" Genma retorted. "Besides, why are you so against it? What else do you want to be doing?"

"Uh, going back to China and looking for a cure? Hello?" Ranma drawled, looking at Genma as if he'd sprouted a second head.

"Ah, yes, China. Where that crazy Chinese amazon chased you day and night looking to put your head on a stick. You want to go back to that, Ranma?" Genma asked sarcastically, watching as his daughter - er, son's face fell. "Look... I know this isn't exactly something I gave you a lot of time to come to terms with..."

"No kidding - you only told me about it, like, ten minutes ago," Ranma interjected incredulously.

"But trust me, I have a good reason for doing this now," Genma continued, ignoring him. And he did. After all, if by some horrible twist of cruel fate their curses were permanent... why, Ranma getting married and giving her a grandchild might be the only way that they could ever see Nodoka again.

Genma spared a moment to mourn his beautiful wife. He missed her so much - her kind smile, her warm heart, her wonderful sense of humor, and especially her delicious cooking. Leaving her and spending a decade roaming the countryside to train his son had been so hard. But it was a sacrifice he'd had to make, for the sake of the Saotome School of Anything Goes Martial Arts! ...How was he to know that all that time alone would make Nodoka go a little loopy?! He'd given her that contract just to prove he was serious - he didn't think she'd actually KEEP it! But the letters she'd been sending him before Jusenkyo had made him increasingly worried, and he thought it was best to keep well away from her whilst his son still had his little gender-bender problem.

Snapping back to his senses, Genma tried to press his point. "Look, it's a matter of honor, Ranma, and I know I raised you not to ignore that." As Ranma winced and glanced aside, Genma knew he'd struck a vulnerable point. His son still hadn't quite mastered the wisdom of knowing when not to be baited by such ploys, which Genma still took full advantage of. "So, I'll make you a deal; we'll turn you back to normal, and then we'll go and see the Tendos. If they don't want to carry the engagement, we'll leave, okay?"

Ranma's lips puckered as if the girl had just sucked an unripe lemon. Finally, she gave a reluctant nod. Satisfied, Genma poured what was left of the water over Ranma's head, watching as rich red hair darkened to its original coal-black and his child's body shifted, reverting to its normal masculine dimensions.

Ranma stood up and absently dusted himself off, and then the two Saotomes made their way onward to the Tendo Dojo.

* * *

Meanwhile, at the Tendo residence...

* * *

Nabiki Tendo smiled excitedly; she couldn't believe what her father had told her. One of them was going to be engaged! Oh, she knew her odds weren't great - with Kasumi and Akane here, what guy was likely to pick her? - but she could get lucky. Maybe this "Ranma Saotome" would be a nice guy who could see her charms for what they were.

Seriously, in a way, she almost owed Kuno a debt of gratitude. If his stupid challenge had done anything useful, it was prove that Furinkan High School's male population was full of idiots who weren't worth her time.

And so it was that as she sat there with her sisters, Kasumi looking pensive and Akane scowling like a thunderstorm, Nabiki was the only one smiling and dressed up nicely. She'd even grabbed a kimono from her closet, hoping to make a good impression. As Akane complained about having no say in the matter, she leaned towards her sister, "Hey, you never know, Akane; he might turn out to be really cute." Straightening up, she smiled at her father, Soun Tendo. "Right, daddy?"

Soun laughed merrily, and then took on a more serious expression. "He'll be here any minute," he said, not directly answering them. Standing up, he marched over to the opening to the yard, looking out over the garden with his hands clasped solemnly behind his back. "Ranma and his father have been on a long training journey; they only just returned to the country from China."

"Oooh, China!" Nabiki chirped, interest flaring. This Ranma guy was definitely sounding more and more appealing the more she heard about him if he was well traveled.

Beside her, Akane scoffed. "So he hiked all the way to China and back. Wow, big deal."

Nabiki threw a sour glance at her younger sister. 'As if you can boast of doing anything that important,' she thought to herself. She just didn't get what Akane was so mad about. Okay, yes, the hentai horde were annoying, but she came out of it without a scratch every day, didn't she? She should be happy to be so popular with the guys!

"Father, how old is Ranma? Younger men are so... young," Kasumi suddenly interjected, a bit redundantly if Nabiki was going to be uncharitable, which to be fair she had a point. As the Hentai Horde proved, maturity amongst the males of the species ran rather a...wide spreadsheet.

"Is he cute?" Nabiki added, more directly cutting to, in her opinion, the heart of the matter.

"I don't know," Soun simply replied.

At this, Nabiki's smile faded. "You don't know?" she repeated incredulously.

"I've never met him." Soun explained, in the same casual tone as before.

Silence reigned over the living room as each of the Tendo girls digested that little revelation. Akane was scowling more furiously than ever, Nabiki's smile had turned into a frown, and even Kasumi looked mildly disappointed at what she was hearing.

Nabiki debated whether or not to start chewing her father out on doing something as idiotic as making an arranged marriage and then never bothering to keep tabs on the male half of the equation, but her thoughts were diverted when an unfamiliar masculine voice suddenly rang out from the entry hall.

"Hello! Anyone there?!"

Soun perked up immediately - if he had ears like a dog, they would have pricked upright towards the ceiling at that voice. "Saotome! My old friend!" he called back jubilantly, jogging off towards the entry hall and away from the trio of females that were also reacting to the arrival.

"Ooh! That means Ranma is here!" Nabiki blurted, smiling with some enthusiasm and hastily rising to her feet to race off after her father. Neither of her sisters seemed at all eager to follow, but that was okay, because it just meant she could meet this mysterious fiance first.

Around the corner, and she got her wish. She barely paid any attention to the sight of her father clapping the shoulder of a beefy, great, shorn bear of a man wearing a travel-worn gi; all of her attention was reserved for the boy standing just behind the two adults, looking as out of place as an American dime in a pocketful of yen. Nabiki greedily drank in the sight of him; he really was cute, with a handsome face and attractive, pale-blue eyes currently set in a shy, uncertain expression, with a red silken shirt just tight enough to hug a body that was lean yet toned, obviously refined through many long hours of exercise and training.

Deep in the primal part of Nabiki's mind, a tiny little voice joyfully squealed 'Jackpot!', whilst the rest of her fought to keep from doing something as blatant as drooling or licking her lips. When it came to looks, Ranma was definitely making the cut. "Why, hello there," she purred, unable to keep her interest from her tone in her current state. "Are you Ranma Saotome?"

"I, I am," he replied, giving her a shy, nervous look that made that little part of Nabiki's brain growl hungrily - definitely not one of the usual hormone-driven jocks, if she was any judge. That was certainly worthier of a higher mark on the potential hunk-o-meter.

"Ah, right, I had almost forgotten!" Soun suddenly said, clapping his daughter on the shoulder and snapping her back to her senses. "This is my middle daughter, Nabiki! Come, you must meet my other daughters," Soun said, starting to lead the small group back to the living room.

Nabiki fell into step, with the Saotomes padding softly along behind. When they reached the living room, Nabiki watched her sisters, sizing up their reaction. Kasumi looked mildly concerned, visibly uncertain what to make of the strange men in their midst. Akane, meanwhile, looked thunderously at Ranma, who visibly shrank back from her hostile reception.

Soun either didn't notice Akane's reaction, or chose to ignore it. "Well then, everyone! Ranma, Genma, these are my other daughters; this is Kasumi, my eldest, and Akane, my youngest," he declared, gesturing to each Tendo in turn.

"Hello, and welcome to our home," Kasumi said politely, bowing in the traditional gesture of welcome.

Akane simply let out an angry 'hmph!' and pointedly looked away from Ranma.

"Akane! I taught you better manners than that!" Soun scolded her, normally he was loathe to scold his youngest daughter but right now the Joining of the Schools was at stake.

The youngest Tendo girl audibly grumbled, folding her arms across her chest, then growled out a rough "Hi" to Ranma, who flatly returned the greeting. Needless to say he was getting...mixed signals as to his arrival and subsequent welcome that made him doubly suspicious of his pop's plans here.

Soun shot his youngest daughter a stern look, but then turned to Ranma and gave him a welcoming smile. "Come, please, sit; you and your father must both be tired after your long journey," he said, gesturing to the table.

"Girls, join us," he added, in a voice that was just as polite, but brooked no argument from his feminine offspring.

Once everybody was seated at the table, Soun smiled and looked at his daughters. "Well, now; since this your first meeting, I'm sure you all must have so many questions. I'm sure Ranma would be happy to answer them, wouldn't you Ranma?" he asked, turning to face their young guest.

"Huh? Oh, sure," Ranma quickly replied. To Nabiki, he looked more caught on the spot than anything, but she couldn't deny, she was curious.

"What was China like, please?" Kasumi asked, catching Nabiki off-guard.

"It was... big," Ranma replied. Then he seemed to realize how lackluster an answer that was and looked sheepish. "Sorry; me and pop were basically walking across the countryside. We spent weeks there, going from town to town and village to village. Plains and mountains and forests... it was sort of like being here in Japan, but everything was spread out a lot more."

"You walked? Why?" Nabiki asked.

"Well, somebody said it was integral to maintaining my growth as a martial artist," Ranma replied, casting a sour look at his father. "I still say you were just too cheap to pay for transport."

"Still, you must be pretty fit to hike that far," Nabiki said, cutting things off before the elder Saotome could do more than growl at his son.

"I guess, maybe a little?" Ranma replied, looking a bit bashful at so much focused female attention, especially Nabiki's… intrigued expression. "I mean, the hiking was easy - I've been doing that my whole life. Swimming to China was the worst part."

One could have heard a pin drop in the Tendo lounge room as three teenage girls (and one grown man, though he hid it better) stared at the teenage boy as if he'd just sprouted an extra head. Ranma ducked his head, clearly not liking the attention.

"You SWAM?!" poured from three feminine throats in perfect synchronization, Nabiki looking impressed while Kasumi and Akane looked shocked and sceptical respectively.

Ranma fidgeted as he tried to figure out how to respond, but his father prevented any potential 'foot in mouth' moments as he clapped his son across the shoulders and let out a vulgar guffaw of laughter. "That he did! My son, too humble for his own good; all the way to China, and then all the way back to Japan when we decided it was time to come home. Always did swim like a kappa, he did."

This was sounding better and better. Okay, he clearly didn't have a lot of money, but he was cute and in very good shape - two out of three wasn't bad when it came to hunks, right? Besides, look at Kuno - he was rich and relatively good looking, and Nabiki wouldn't touch him if he paid her. Plus, Nabiki thought to herself, he seemed reasonably trainable as males went and that would make things easier for sure

"Wow, hiking to China. Big deal," Akane snorted crassly, not willing to give in to what she saw as a challenge to her own prowess.

"You're good at walking - are you any good at fighting?" she demanded, giving Ranma a look that was equal parts dismissive and challenging.

Now Ranma's embarrassed mien melted away; If there was one thing he'd learned throughout his father's…'special' style of training, it was never back down from a challenge. "I've spent my whole life training and sparring. I'd say I have a little skill," he dryly retorted, seeing Akane's look and raising her a lookover of amusement.

"Well, let's put that talent to the test - I want a match! Right now!" she snapped, her face red with annoyance at this...this...baka!

"Akane!" Soun chided her, feeling very much on the back foot with his youngest daughter, perhaps not being involved was one of his less than stellar life choices...

"What? If one of us is supposed to marry him because he's the heir to the Saotome school, then shouldn't we make sure he's actually good at fighting?!" Akane shot back.

Soun glowered like a thundercloud, opened his mouth as if to speak... and then closed it again. Despite his obvious distaste for his youngest daughter's manners, it was clear he conceded that she had a valid point.

Akane smirked and shot a challenging glare at their visitor. "So, what do you say? You willing to show us your stuff?"

"Fine. Where and when?" Ranma replied, a faint blush growing on his cheeks as his mind contemplated the other ways her words could be taken. Said blush was seen by Nabiki, who smirked to herself at finding out her potential fiance would be easy to tease. That would make things so much more fun.

"Right now, in the dojo! Follow me!" Akane said, standing up proudly and marching off in the direction of the dojo. Ranma followed her close behind, and their fathers were quickly on his heels. The elder Tendo girls were the last ones to leave the living room.

"Oh, Akane... why is she being so rude?" Kasumi sighed, she despaired for her youngest sibling sometimes.

"She's taking it out on him because she's mad at daddy springing this on us out of nowhere," Nabiki replied casually, long since inured to Akane's temper. Unlike her elder sister, though, she was not really upset with this turn of events.

She was rather curious about how her potential fiance stacked up as a fighter, and this would be a perfect opportunity to see. Besides, if he and Akane were taking such a strong dislike to each other already, that meant she had a much stronger chance to win him for herself...

The Tendo Dojo was fairly humble, as such things went. It had never seen a great deal of traffic, but since Mrs. Tendo had passed away... well, Nabiki didn't like to think about it. Instead, she just watched as Akane took up a combat stance on the floor, whilst Ranma remained casually poised two steps away. His arms, by comparison, were resting loosely at his sides, and he didn't look even the slightest concerned.

Soun formally raised an arm; it had been a long time since he had played the part of a referee, but he still remembered how it was done. "I trust you both to remember the rules of fair play...Begin!"

Akane let out a ferocious shout and immediately charged towards Ranma, and reflexively Nabiki felt her heart clench. She had seen the biggest, strongest and toughest men in Furinkan High laid out cold with one blow from her sister's hand, and whilst she could probably take comfort in the fact that such a feat should guarantee she wouldn't lose him to Akane, she wasn't exactly thrilled at the prospect of seeing Ranma laid out cold!

...And it turned out that she needn't have worried. Akane's hand lashed out in one of her iconic brain-rattling haymakers... and Ranma dodged it effortlessly. He didn't even move his feet, he just twisted his head aside at the last moment and Akane's fist sailed past.

Nabiki couldn't believe it. Akane didn't seem to either; she struck out again, and again, and then again, punching with fast, furious strikes that routinely demolished the ranks of the Hentai Horde. Not a single one of them even ruffled a hair on Ranma's head, who bent and swayed like a stick of bamboo in the breeze, dodging each and every one of them.

Akane's cries turned into a full-blown scream of fury and frustration, confusion written on her face as she pressed the attack, seeming to force Ranma to at least fall back in the face of her advance. When she had him pinned against the wall, she bulled forward, launching her mightiest punch...

And Ranma simply leapt straight up, soaring off of the floor in defiance of gravity and casually leaping higher than Akane was tall. As the youngest Tendo's fist punched clean through the dojo's wall, Ranma made an impossible twist and flipped through the air. As Akane yanked her hand from the wall and spun around to face him, Ranma's own hand speared through the air and tapped against Akane's forehead - not a punch, per say, but a sharp enough impact that Akane stumbled backwards, losing her footing and landing flat on her rump.

The whole Tendo family stared at the tableau as a shocked Akane gaped up at Ranma, before Soun finally managed to raise his arm and stutter out, "Ranma Saotome wins!"

Ranma smirked, and bowed to Akane, the action clearly more sarcastic than respectful, and then turned his back to her before walking away.

Akane was furious; how dare this, this... BOY show her up like this! With a scream of fury, she suddenly leapt to her feet and charged at Ranma... who seemed to disappear in the blink of an eye. The next thing Akane knew, something had hooked around her ankles and pulled them out from under her, sweeping out her footing so that she fell flat on the floor. Later, she would piece together that Ranma had sidestepped her and tripped her up faster than she could see. But, at the moment, all she was aware of was the foot that had planted itself against her back and was pinning her to the floor with almost contemptuous ease.

"Let me go, you smug jerk!" Akane screamed, trying to flail out and shake him off, but her assailant simply pressed down firmer, well out of range of her arms.

"You want to play rough? I can keep this up all day," Ranma drawled, Nabiki noting he was probably telling the truth with how at ease his form seemed to be.

"Akane! That's enough! How dare you do something like that!" Soun suddenly thundered, making everybody in the room flinch.

"B-but daddy! He - this pervert -" Akane protested.

"He did nothing except win a fair and honest match!" Soun decreed, frowning at Akane with an anger that none of his daughters could remember him showing before. "I am deeply disappointed with you, Akane - I taught you better manners than to make such unprovoked attacks! Your poor sportsmanship shames me," he said, sternly folding his arms across his chest as he resisted his youngest child's blandishments.

"D-daddy!" Akane protested, eyes huge with shock and wet with unshed tears. Her father had NEVER spoken to her in a manner anything like this, and her heart clenched until she felt it would break. This wasn't how it was supposed to go! She was supposed to beat him up, show him that she wasn't some _thing_ like the other boys thought, and that would be that. This; this was far beyond what she could have conceived.

"Now, now, Tendo; in fairness to the girl, my son is rather adept at provoking such hostile responses," Genma suddenly interjected, shooting a sharp glare at his son as he patted Soun's shoulder in a conciliatory manner. Last thing he wanted was his son ruining things when they had started so well!

Ranma rolled his eyes, but stepped off of Akane. "Fine, whatever. But if you want a punching bag, tomboy, then you can look for somebody else to fill the role," he said, already marching across the floor. "You want to seriously spar or train, that's a different story."

Nabiki shook off her stupor at this shocking turn of events and darted forward to meet him. "That was great!" she said, giving him a huge smile that was only mildly played up. She was impressed, not a starry eyed groupie after all "I don't think I've seen anyone handle Akane that easily, but you made it seem effortless!"

"I-ah-er, well, it wasn't really that big a deal," Ranma replied, looking embarrassed at the praise and meekly rubbing the back of his head. He looked away from Nabiki to emphasize his words, but she could see the faint blush on his cheeks.

Normally he'd have puffed out his chest and boasted about it, but he was finding his father's stance on 'no distractions from the art' when it came to lovely girls was leaving him a bit flat footed. He blushed a bit harder when he realized that he'd just thought of her as 'lovely' out of the blue. 'We just met out of the blue anyways, cause pops is up to his usual tricks again, no need to read too deep into it.'

'Handsome, an incredible athlete, AND modest too? Ooohh, Nabiki, you may have just hit the jackpot!' Nabiki thought to herself, unconsciously grinning as she sized up her prize. Yes, yes this was definitely a situation she could adapt to, however tactless her father had been about springing it on them.

Before she could speak more, Kasumi suddenly interjected after checking on Akane, who'd merely huffed that 'she was fine' to her eldest sister, "That was indeed impressive Ranma-kun, but you must need freshening up. If you'll follow me, I'll show you to the bathroom."

"Bath?" Ranma said, gaze suddenly snapping up to face the eldest Tendo daughter. "No, thank you, I don't need a bath," he said, shaking his head firmly.

"You've been hiking a long way, Ranma, and you were out in the rain," Kasumi gently replied, pointing at Ranma's visibly water-stained clothes. "And now you've been exercising, and you're all sweaty. Please, come with me," she said, her tone sweet as before, but brooking no argument. And so it was that Ranma was first exposed to the phenomenon that all the Nerima ward took for granted: you could never say no to Kasumi.

"Okay," Ranma said, bowing his head and politely following Kasumi as she left the dojo, taking care to avoid any puddles or drips of cold water along the way.

In their wake, Nabiki frowned as she noticed Ranma's avoidance of anything liquid. She didn't really think Ranma was one of those guys who didn't bathe on a regular basis, he looked too healthy for that...but she'd be a fool if something about that didn't stink...

* * *

Ten minutes later...

* * *

With Ranma now busy washing off in the tub, the Tendo family and Genma Saotome had gathered in the living room again. Accepting a tall glass of beer from Kasumi, who passed a second mug to Genma, Soun smiled at his daughters. "So then, girls; you've all had a chance to get to know Ranma. What do you think of the engagement?"

"I think it stinks!" Akane snapped, arms folded across her chest and glowering at all and sundry in her state of high dudgeon. "He's just another stupid jerk, like the boys at high school. I want nothing to do with him!"

"That's not fair, Akane. He's been a very nice boy since he got here... although I must admit that I do think he's a bit young for me," Kasumi responded, her expression thoughtful as she gave the matter some thought.

"Oh, please, Kasumi; three years is nothing. But if that's how you feel, then I'll be happy to take him off your hands," Nabiki said, grinning at her sister in a manner more like a hungry fox than a young lady.

"Nabiki? YOU want to marry Ranma?" Soun said, looking at her as if she'd just turned into a nekomimi. Out of the three of them Soun had to admit he'd pegged Nabiki as the least likely what with her...hobbies and all that.

"Don't sound so surprised, daddy," Nabiki dryly quipped back, giving him a raised brow that brought to Soun's mind times when his dearly departed wife would read his mind like Nabiki evidently just did. "You say that somebody's got to marry him, and we all know Akane wouldn't have changed her mind even before he handled her like a doll,"

"He got lucky!" Akane protested fiercely, her face flushed with outrage and injured dignity. She surpressed a twinge of concern that had been niggling at her mind since Ranma had danced around her in the dojo, she was still the best dammit! One out of town boy getting lucky didn't change anything!

"Sure, Akane. He got lucky when he dodged every single attack you made." Nabiki rolled her eyes at Akane's stubbornness before turning back to their still bemused paternal figure.

"Anyway, the point is, that leaves me and Kasumi to do this thing, and since Kasumi said she's not interested or at least not interested enough, that leaves me. Besides, he's cute and nice, which are two things I can't say about any of the other dimwits at Furinkan. So... yeah, I'll be his fiancee," Nabiki said, shrugging her shoulders, worst comes to worst it didn't work out and they went their separate ways. Not like she was going to let the 'two old men' push her around as they seemed inclined to.

She could feel the stares from her sisters and father boring into her soul, but she simply smiled and let them stare, showing them her best ice queen poker face. Only Genma, an outsider who clearly neither understood nor cared about the family dynamics, paid her no attention, instead focusing exclusively on his liquor, draining the glass in record time and already on the hunt for a refill.

Finally, Soun nodded his head in acceptance of Nabiki's reasoning; he had some misgivings, having originally held a vague desire to see the 'schools joined' more thoroughly via Akane and Ranma. But as Nabiki pointed out, his youngest daughter wasn't interested, and he trusted Nabiki to know her limits. "Very well then. Nabiki shall wed Ranma, and the two of you shall carry on the Tendo Dojo," he declared in his most solemn and formal intonation. "All that remains is to tell Ranma of the decision."

"What decision?" came a quiet voice from the doorway. Everybody looked up and saw Ranma standing there, freshly bathed and clad in a new shirt - orange with a little bowtie on it.

"Hey there, handsome; we've decided that you and I are the ones who're going to be getting hitched," Nabiki replied, grinning at her new fiance and lazily beckoning him over, putting his startled expression down to shock at getting the best of the deal.

"Nabiki! A little delicacy, please," Kasumi chided her, able to see more clearly that Ranma was evidently unprepared for the announcement. It almost made her frown at Mr. Saotome but that was for later

"Engaged? Us? Are you sure?" Ranma asked, looking at her in surprise, looking between the faces of the Tendo family for confirmation.

"You don't mind, do you?" Nabiki asked, although this time her glib tones hid some real concern. What if he actually didn't like her? She thought that she'd made a good impression, but what if she wasn't his type? Last thing she wanted after committing to this was to find out it was going to be nothing but trouble.

"M-mind?" Ranma stuttered, visibly caught off-guard. "No, no I don't mind at all," he quickly added, shaking his head for intended emphasis. His desire to reassure Nabiki having bypassed his confusion over being suddenly engaged. He still wasn't sure about this but she seemed rather interested and it wasn't like they were getting married right then, so they'd have time to get to know each other.

"Yay! Then you can come and sit over here next to me; we're just about to have dinner," Nabiki chirped decisively. Okay, maybe she was overplaying it a little, but who cared - she was happy that things seemed to be working out and it was clear that Ranma needed a bit of guiding hand here.

She hadn't woken up that morning expecting to get hitched, but the way she saw it, this was more like a parent-arranged dating system than anything more...permanent, unlike what her father's language had suggested. She was confident she could finagle her way out of things if it turned out Ranma really wasn't a catch...but, right now, he looked like the welcome end to a long and unpleasant drought in her romantic life.

Not to mention he was fun to tease and while she might consider herself a 'modern' woman she did enjoy the game of 'make the boy blush and stammer', as was tradition for her half of the species.

Her smile only grew wider as Ranma quietly did as she'd suggested and sat gracefully down next to her, whilst Kasumi headed to the kitchen to fetch plates and food. She gave him an encouraging smile which he tentatively responded to before being distracted by the smell of Kasumi's food.

Dinner itself passed quietly, as everybody tucked into the food. Their new guests in particular attacked their meal with ravenous gusto, and although Ranma's table manners were decent, even Nabiki couldn't help but stare at the rate he was eating. "Whoa, slow down there, it's not going to run away! When was the last time you ate?" she teased him, albeit with an undercurrent of concern.

To her surprise, Ranma had to stop and consider the matter, making a bead of sweat trickle down face. "Um... yesterday, that was it," he replied casually.

"Don't tease the girl, Ranma; you ate this morning," Genma retorted dryly; partially because he knew his offspring was having her on a bit, partially because he didn't want to give the impression that he was starving the boy...just ensuring his hunger was honed, that's all.

"Oh yeah, because one lousy can of warm soda and an ancient strip of snake jerky is a meal," Ranma scoffed in reply, leaving Nabiki torn between amazement and disgust. Was he being serious?

Soun nodded sagely, missing Nabiki's expression through the closed eyes of reminiscence. "The path of the wandering martial artist is truly fraught with peril," he solemnly declared.

"I remember the many days and nights that we went hungry when we were in training, eh, Saotome?" He said, somewhat ruefully, to his old friend.

Genma nodded sagely in response. "Too true, Tendo, but it keeps you sharp, so it is all to the good, I say."

At that, everybody resumed eating, although Nabiki took a moment to direct a sympathetic look at her new fiance. She had something of a healthy appetite herself, so the idea of skipping meals wasn't one that she liked. Still, it didn't seem the right moment to bring it up, and so she returned her attention back to her own meal. For all she knew, it might be related to the fasting some Buddhist monks performed.

Once everybody was finished - to nobody's surprise, the Saotomes asked for seconds - Kasumi surprised her sisters by being the first to break the silence and ask Ranma a question. "So, Ranma, why did you and your father go to China?"

Ranma audibly choked, eyes going wide like a deer caught in the headlights. "I - um - what?"

"It's just, well, Japan is full of dojos and senseis. Why did you go all the way to China just to train?" Kasumi asked politely, tilting her head a bit in her curiosity.

"As fine as our martial artists are," Genma suddenly interjected, his tone solemn as he adjusted his glasses, looking for all the world the picture of the stern, wise sensei, "Japan does not hold a monopoly on martial arts. Anything Goes is the school of all schools, and so, for Ranma to master it, he must encounter and master as many different techniques and styles as he can. China seemed the perfect place to broaden his horizons, as it were - especially as the Saotome School considers mid-air combat its speciality, and thus we have more to learn from kung-fu than we do from kempo."

"Oh? So, did you spend a lot of time in China?" Kasumi said, still looking at Ranma, who seemed to have calmed down a little. Nabiki still wasn't sure why he'd frozen up like that at Kasumi's question.

"It sure felt like it... we walked for miles; there were times we didn't see a village for days at a time. China's an awful big place, but it's even bigger when you're crossing it on foot," Ranma added. Nabiki shuddered a little at the idea of something so grueling, but Ranma actually gave a wistful smile. "Course, we were there only just last month, so I'm still a little unsure on how long we were actually out of the country," he added.

"So, what dojos did you train at, anyway?" Akane asked. She still clearly wasn't happy about Ranma's presence, but between the fact that she was no longer on the hook to marry him, and the subject matter, she was clearly ready to make some attempt at a peace offering.

"Gee... I, well, I don't know, we visited so many different dojos, senseis, and training grounds - it's a little hard to keep them all straight," Ranma confessed apologetically, scratching the back of his head.

"Except for that last one! Boy, we'll never forget it, no matter how hard we try, huh, Ranma?" Genma suddenly interjected, laughing heartily.

Nabiki wondered for a moment what he was talking about, and then realized that Ranma looked like his father had just grown an extra head.

"Are you nuts, old man?!" he suddenly shouted while making 'shushing' gestures with his hands. "Don't tell them about that place!"

"What place?" Nabiki asked, but she was drowned out by Soun's irked, "Show some respect for your father, Ranma!"

"Oh, it's alright, Tendo! Ranma's still embarrassed over the whole thing. Our final stop in China before we returned here was to Jusenkyo," Genma explained, waving away Soun's outrage on his behalf and not even registering the exasperated " Okay, where's _Jusenkyo_?" from Nabiki.

Ranma looked like he wanted to strangle his father, letting out a choked sound as he made grasping motions at his paternal figure, whilst Soun looked intrigued. "The legendary training ground of the cursed springs? You actually went there?"

"Oh, yes! And we found out how it got the name first hand!" Genma guffawed again, then turning a gimlet gaze onto his scion. "Come now, Ranma; it's time you showed them."

"You **ARE** nuts!" Ranma howled, and in a blur of motion that Nabiki couldn't follow, he suddenly leapt up from his seat, hurling over to the hallway in one mighty bound. She just stared at the spot her potential fiance had vacated, whilst a single statement flashed through her mind: **'I have so many questions!'**

But Genma leapt up from his own seat with speed far greater than Nabiki would have thought such a big man could be capable of, and the room almost shook with the thunderclap-like smack of flesh on flesh. For a moment, the Saotomes were frozen in a tableau that the stunned Tendos could only try to comprehend; Genma as solid and immovable as a nurikabe, face expressionless but eyes cold, whilst Ranma's chest heaved as he inhaled and exhaled harshly, eyes darting about in pursuit of the slightest opening, body trembling with what could be either fear or the urge to violence - the human embodiment of a wild horse about to bolt.

Suddenly, Ranma lashed out at his father, but Genma deflected his son's punch with practiced ease. The two punched and kicked, Ranma trying to force his way past Genma and clearly not holding back out of any sense of filial devotion, whilst Genma attempted to stymie his son's efforts and grapple him.

"W-what's the meaning of this?! Saotome!" Soun shouted, clearly at a loss for words and not caring who provided an explanation as long as one was forthcoming, but neither Genma nor Ranma responded to his demands.

Instead, Ranma tried to leap clean over his father's head, just as he had done to Akane earlier that afternoon. But this time, he was facing somebody who knew that trick. Genma's hand lashed out at blinding speed and grabbed Ranma by the ankle, hauling him back like a sack of potatoes. The elder Saotome swung his son around his head and then threw him straight out through the open patio doors and into the koi pond, where he landed with a mighty splash.

"Ranma!" Nabiki yelled, scrambling over to the patio in her concern. She didn't understand what was going on - had she just lost her cute new fiance?!

Genma simply folded his arms sternly across his chest - wait, when had he managed to get Ranma's shirt off? "No more delaying the inevitable, boy. It's time they learned the story."

Later, Nabiki would have sworn that the koi pond bubbled and churned, frothing as Ranma surfaced with a scream of fury... but, at the moment, she had other things on her mind. The moon was full and gibbous in the sky above, melding with the light from the living room to make the whole scene crystal clear.

Instead of the drenched teenaged Adonis that a part of Nabiki had hoped to see, the water clung to milky skin and well-formed curves, moonlight glittering on the ampleness of two round, heavy breasts that jiggled freely in the cool night breeze. Locks of what had been coal black hair, now a dark red, clung to a wet scalp over smoldering blue eyes. Even the scream of fury that split the heavens was high-pitched and jagged, a woman's voice rasping as its owner tried to force it to some semblance of a masculine baritone.

Because Ranma had gone into the koi pond as a boy... and come out as a GIRL!

"You stupid old fool!" He - she? It? Screamed as it charged across the grass, a streak of lightning in motion, too fast even for Genma to stop. The Saotome patriarch left out a strangled cry as Ranma's fist buried itself in his solar plexus, and then it was Genma's turn to go flying into the pond... where he emerged as the biggest, burliest, meaning looking panda that Nabiki had ever seen!

"What is going on here?!" Soun roared, and Nabiki blinked; she'd been so caught up in staring that she'd not even noticed her father and her little sister moving into position to protect them.

Even with that, her gaze was still fixed on the sight of her transformed fiance, who seemed to realize that she was looking and visibly shrank away.

"N-no - please - Don't look at me!" Ranma pleaded, choking back a sob and turning away from Nabiki's wide-eyed gaze. The sodden wet teen curled their arms protectively around their chest, huddling in on themselves as if they could disappear if only they tried hard enough.

"R-Ranma...?" Nabiki asked unthinkingly, still trying to accept the reality of what she had just seen.

"Saotome? If that's really you, then talk to me - tell me what's going on," Soun demanded.

"I..." Ranma visibly shuddered, sucked in a breath, and then sighed hugely. "Yeah, I'm Ranma Saotome," the boy-girl confessed reluctantly. "And that overfed furball there is my moron of a father," she sneered, pointing at the impassive hulk that was the panda, who had sat down on one of the larger rocks lining the koi pond.

"How is this possible?" Soun asked in a mix of both shocked incredulity and hesitant fascination, a sentiment that Nabiki echoed.

"It's... it's a long story," Ranma sighed. "May we come in? It's cold out here when you're wet."

Soun stopped, visibly thinking it over. He glanced at his youngest, Akane, who scowled and shook her head, and then at his eldest, who nodded. He looked at Nabiki, hoping for a tie-breaker, but she was still stunned into silence as her previously pure sceptic mind was thrown for an utter loop by physical proof of actual _magic_. Finally, his manners got the best of him. "Come on in, then. But I want to hear the whole story."

"Of course you do," Ranma replied dully. She shuffled reluctantly back over to the patio, at which point Soun realized that she was naked from the waist up, and he hastily scooped up her shirt and gave it back to her.

Even despite her dumbfoundedness, Nabiki couldn't help but privately note that this female Ranma had one of the biggest bosoms she'd ever seen. She was glad she wasn't the insecure type, because Ranma definitely outweighed her in that department. A part of her wondered if they caused backaches before getting booted into the hindbrain by the rest of her mind that was still processing the itsy bitsy, but ever so crucial, little tiny detail that her male fiance **had a rack**!

Once more, the Tendos and the Saotomes sat down at the table. But this time, Ranma sat alone, on the side facing the courtyard, whilst the Tendos surrounded her like a judge and jury while Genma sat on the patio, silently watching the whole proceedings through the open door like a very odd pet. Ignoring her father's presence, Ranma visibly sucked in a shuddering breath, sighed again, and then began to speak.

"It's all my stupid old man's fault. He's the one who came up with the brilliant idea to go to Jusenkyo, even though he could barely speak a word of Chinese and read even less than he spoke."

"So, Genma didn't know what he should expect at Jusenkyo?" Soun asked with a certain amount of familiarity at his old friend's...impetuousness. He was aware that his friend - or at least the panda that had disguised itself as his friend earlier - was right there in the room, but he couldn't bring himself to directly talk to panda just yet.

"Him? Course not," Ranma scoffed vehemently. "He just thought that the name sounded cool and decided we should go there. So we had to find out why they call it the Training Ground of Cursed Springs firsthand, all because he got a bug up his ass and couldn't ask around."

"I'm still a little confused on that subject," Soun confessed slowly, as he tried to verbally steer things back to clarifying the overall situation. "You're telling us that Jusenkyo did this to you somehow?"

"That's right. So, we get there; we've been hiking for days through the Bayankala Mountain Range of Mount Quanjing, scrabbling and scraping our way to the most remote backwaters of the Qinghai Province, and at the end of it all is a valley full of all these little ponds and springs, big flat-topped shoots of bamboo jutting out everywhere."

"Doesn't sound like much after all that effort," Nabiki numbly commented.

"That's what I said," Ranma scoffed. "But, anyway, there's this guide going on about the history of the place - over 100 springs, each with its own tragedy, yadda-yadda-yadda. So pop gets bored and we start the training; jumping from bamboo pole to bamboo pole, mid-air combat... nothing really fancy. And down below, the guide's shouting at us to stop - we didn't know why, until I kicked my old man into one of the springs - and he came out looking like this."

Ranma jabbed a thumb scornfully at the direction of the glowering panda. "The guide finally gets around to mentioning that the springs are full of magic; they're all cursed, so if you fall into a spring, you transform into the image of whatever creature drowned in it. Of course, my old man has to be so stupid that he not only brought us there, he punches me into the Nanniichuan - the Spring of Drowned Girl - whilst I'm listening to the guide!"

Here, the boy/girl turned and shot a vicious glower at the panda, who waved his hands and shook his head in a protestation of innocence. When Genma looked at the Tendos for validation, though, he was met with disbelieving stares from Akane and Nabiki, a reproachful look from Soun, and Kasumi shaking her head. "Really, Mr. Saotome? That was a foolish thing to do," she scolded him, making the hulking panda wilt with the power of her polite displeasure.

"Is there a cure?" Nabiki blurted out impulsively, then winced as she saw the crestfallen look on Ranma's face.

"I... we don't know," she admitted sadly. "I mean, we know how to change back, but we don't know how to get rid of this stupid curse."

"And... how **do** you change back?" Soun asked diplomatically, his only sign of the urgency of his question being the way his gaze was _honed_ on Ranma's face.

"Hot water," was Ranma's flat reply.

"Eh?" The Tendo family responded, making the cursed Saotome heir sigh.

"Cold water activates the curse and makes us change. A good splash of hot water changes us back - until we get splashed again."

'So that is why he was avoiding the rain and got worried about the bath.' Nabiki thought

"I see... Kasumi, dear? Would you go and boil a kettle for our guests?" Soun asked his eldest, to which she nodded and quietly departed for the kitchen.

""Don't let us be a bother to you, Mr. Tendo; we'll see ourselves out," Ranma said softly. The pandafied Genma let out a choked growl of shock and Nabiki felt her heart clench.

"What?! Don't be absurd! What are you talking about?" Soun exploded, hands slamming on the table as he suddenly loomed over the cursed youth.

"Well, you obviously can't want us to stay - we're freaks! I don't even know why my pops made us come here before we got cured!" Ranma protested, waving her hands in warding gestures.

"Bah! I will admit, the curse is a little... hard to swallow... but all things considered it's a minor problem," the Tendo patriarch replied, dismissing Ranma's concerns with a wave of his hand, too committed to the path of 'joining the schools' to back out now in his mind.

"You can't be serious! You'd let a pervert like that marry my sister?!" Akane snarled, thrusting an accusatory hand at Ranma.

"Who are you calling a pervert?!" Ranma snapped back, glaring at Akane.

"Akane, that is enough! We will speak of this later!" Soun thundered, making his youngest daughter quail; she couldn't remember the last time she'd made her father angry enough to scold her, and yet he'd done so twice today.

"He's right, Akane; that is a very unfair thing to say," Kasumi interjected, before passing Soun the kettle she had just returned with. "He has not done anything perverted so far and it would be unfair of us to judge him on something that, without evidence to the contrary, was not his fault."

"Thank you, Kasumi," Soun said with a grateful nod. And then he unceremoniously poured the steaming, boiling hot water over Ranma's head, who let out a screech of protest as the almost scalding liquid washed over her scalp.

"It don't need to be that hot!" Ranma yipped. And... somehow, in the time it had taken Nabiki to blink, the busty redheaded girl had gone back to the boy she had met that afternoon. 'Oh good, he keeps his clothes,' a part of her brain casually observed; that would make things awkward otherwise.

"Sorry," Soun replied, putting the still half-full kettle on the table on a hotplate to keep it from burning the wooden table. Unnoticed by everyone else, Genma eyed it, but privately resolved to leave it until it wasn't so scorching hot. "Anyway, my point remains; this is a minor issue. You and Nabiki are engaged now; you won't be going anywhere. Do you understand? It's a matter of family honor."

Akane stared at Soun with a look of shock, complete with jaw kissing the ground. How could he not see a boy _turning into a girl_ as anything but a big **nope**?! But Kasumi poked her side and shook her head silently, impressing on the younger sibling that now was not the time to bring it up.

"I..." Ranma fidgeted, then glanced at Nabiki with an inscrutable expression. "...Alright," he finally said, hanging his head meekly when he saw her inscrutable expression. He wasn't going to push right now, heck he hadn't wanted to bring it up in the first place.

"Now, it's been a long day and this was a...rather exhausting little revelation. I suggest that we turn in for the night," Soun stated firmly, as this would give everyone a chance to regroup and, more importantly, give him time to confer with his old comrade in suffering and see just how much any of this changed their plans, his assurances otherwise notwithstanding.

Ranma simply nodded, glancing up as Kasumi touched his shoulder politely. "Please follow me, Ranma," she said, before leading him to the guest room on the second floor.

Akane followed them, partly out of a desire to watch over her big sister, but also to get out of the charged atmosphere of the room, a part of her feeling intensely like she had dodged a bullet...one she didn't envy Nabiki or at all.

Nabiki watched them go, and then turned to her father. "I... think I'll go and have a bath before I turn in. Goodnight, daddy," she said, already moving to leave. She needed to clear her head - she couldn't believe what had just happened tonight. Magic wasn't supposed to be real! It was all kid's stories, fairy tales! But... she'd seen a boy turn into a girl and back again, and a man turn into a panda. She just... she couldn't think about it anymore, or she was going to go nuts.

"Some engagement," she muttered sourly to herself as she flipped the sign on the bathroom door and started stripping off her clothes.

Meanwhile, up in the bedroom, Ranma had slumped down in the futon that Kasumi had shown him to, pulling the covers over himself in an effort to block out the rest of the world. "Some engagement," he muttered bitterly.

* * *

 _ **Chapter End & Closing Notes**_

* * *

And there we are. The first step taken on a journey that I hope you will enjoy. Originally, I had plans to cover both Ranma's arrival at the Tendo Dojo and his first day at Furinkan High School as a single massive chapter, but scheduling issues forced me to abandon this plan.

So, I present this to you as my Xmas Present for 2018. Here;s to hoping for a full return to fanfiction writing in 2019!


	2. First Day at Furinkan!

Author's Notes:

Wow, just... wow. I had no idea so many people still remembered me. Thank you all for making me feel so welcome again, and I'm sorry this chapter took so long - between various real-world factors, such as the release of Resident Evil 2, I was delayed. I will be trying my hardest to get at least one chapter released per month, and hopefully more frequently than that when the time allows.

* * *

 _ **Chapter 2: First Day at Furinkan! The Path to Marriage Begins!**_

* * *

The sun rose on another beautiful spring morning in the Nerima district of Tokyo, the last few sakura blossoms still clinging to their trees almost glittering as the dawn light shimmered through the morning mist. It was another peaceful, placid, ordinary sort of day in Nerima... except for one house.

Nabiki Tendo bolted upright in her bed with a muffled curse as a sudden masculine bellow filled the air, ending in a loud crash. She had not had the best night's sleep, tossing and turning as her mind struggled to comprehend the shocks it had received the previous evening. Add in the fact that she wasn't a morning person at the best of times, and she was particularly displeased with her abrupt awakening at what she could only consider an unholy hour of the morning.

Especially when a loud 'kiyai' and the meaty sound of blows being exchanged promptly drifted into her bedroom.

"What in the world is going on?" She grumbled aloud in a half-curious, half-irritated tone of voice, pulling on her slippers and heading downstairs to the living room. Even as she reached the bottom of the stairs, a partial explanation reached her ears.

"What's the meaning of throwing me out the window, boy?!" thundered an unfamiliar voice.

"Oh, like you wouldn't have done the same thing," came another stranger's voice, younger than the first.

By that point, Nabiki had reached the living room and was able to see the source of the disturbance; their visitors from the previous evening, the father and son duo who called themselves the Saotomes. Both were clad in well-worn gis, and looked disgustingly awake for, in her sensible opinion, so early in the morning.

Genma didn't respond to his son's retort with words; instead, he let out a battle cry of his own and charged forward. Though she'd seen him in action briefly the night before, it still amazed her that such a blocky-looking man could move so fast! And yet, Ranma wasn't even the slightest phased by his father bearing down on him; they traded blows, blocks, counterstrikes and grapples at a speed that Nabiki could barely follow, springing around the garden like a pair of human-sized fleas; the branches of the loquat tree, the boulders around the koi pond, ornamental lanterns - if it stuck out above the ground, they were bouncing off of it.

"What is the matter with you boy? What's got you all worked up this morning?" Genma complained, launching an open palm thrust at his son.

"Oh, shut up, old man! You know perfectly well what you did!" Ranma snapped back, deflecting the strike and punching Genma in the gut.

"Ooof! Oh, come on! You can't be holding a grudge over that!" Genma protested. "It was going to come out eventually!"

"That's your only excuse? You went to all this trouble to get me to agree to come here in the first place, you drag us away from China for the sake of this engagement, and then you sabotage me like that?"

Nabiki was still half asleep but she noticed the particular emphasis on the word 'sabotage' and focused a bit more out of curiosity.

"Sabotage?!" Genma blurted, looking dumbfounded. "You couldn't have really thought you were going to hide the curse from her... wait... you like her, don't you?" he grinned with what Nabiki could say professionally was an evil smirk, laughing heartily for good measure.

"You were fighting tooth and nail not to come here, and now you're mad because I embarrassed you in front of your new crush!" he guffawed.

"S-shut up! I didn't know she'd be so cute when you brought us here," Ranma snapped back, cheeks pinkening with embarrassment. "But she is cute - and nice, and friendly... and now she won't want to speak to me again, because you made me look like a freak!" And with that, he lunged for his father - a sloppy move, because Genma grabbed his son's gi and used his momentum to fling Ranma into the pond.

Nabiki was glad nobody else in the house was nearby, else she'd have the choice situation of someone seeing the infamous 'Ice Queen of Nerima' blushing like a schoolgirl. Which, technically speaking, she was, but that wasn't the point. She was Nabiki the Mercenary, she who many courted for information, not her looks, which were often compared unfavorably to her sisters'.

To have a hunky boy - and, gender-bending weird-ass curse or not, that hadn't changed at least, be so taken with her, **and** call her cute in the bargain, was a shock to the system to say the least. It actually took her a moment to collect herself enough to be an active audience to the Saotome 'discussion' taking place outside, which had progressed to Genma taking the lead and attacking the still flustered (' _because he thinks I'm cute!' Nabiki mentally squeaked_ ) Ranma both physically and verbally.

"Oh, get over yourself, Ranma! You worry too much!" he scoffed, cuffing his son on the head for added emphasis. "I bet a good night's sleep and she'll be fine, if you think she's so great. She looked like she had a good head on her shoulders... assuming you were looking that high," he smirked as he saw his son's blush redouble. While he had trained Ranma to not be a common teenage male ruled by hormones, it was amusing to tease him about his appreciation for his intended's...assets.

Which is when an iron tub suddenly came spinning through the air from the other end of the pond and slammed into Genma's face, knocking him to the ground with a strangled profanity. "Ah, shaddup, ya old fool," Ranma snapped, blushing almost as red as his - currently her - hair.

Nabiki wondered if she should step out... talk to him, let him know she had heard him. But she just couldn't bring herself to speak up.

'What is the matter with you? Are you a blushing idiot like those other girls, or are you Nabiki Tendo?' she scolded herself. The kids at Furinkan High might call her names like 'Ice Queen' and 'Mercenary' as insults, but she'd always done her best to view them as at least partially badges of honor; she was a strong woman, a smart woman, and she knew how to get what she wanted, when she wanted!

...So why was she just standing here? Okay, yes, even the Ice Queen got lonely, but being engaged didn't mean she'd lost her mind! Unconsciously, Nabiki stiffened her spine, drew herself upright, and made ready to step out and talk to her new beau...

And that's when Genma chose that moment to leap back up from the lawn, face bruise-red from where he'd been hit, and club Ranma over the skull with it. Nabiki instinctively froze, watching as Ranma hit the ground hard - and then bounced back with a roar, filling the air with clamor and clangor as the tub became an impromptu weapon and shield that both Saotomes warred over. As they bounced and rattled and banged over the yard, Nabiki calmly stepped back and sat at the table. She had many good qualities, but not least of those was the common sense not to get involved in a brawl like that!

Not that sitting by on the sidelines wasn't a good idea for other reasons. She could really admire Ranma's speed and agility from here... if only he were in the right shape, then this would be some real fun, but even as it was, this was like watching a kung fu movie for free.

"Honestly! Who do they think they're impressing?" Akane grumbled, making Nabiki start and bite back a yelp.

"When did you get here?" she blurted out, then cursed herself for losing control like that.

Fortunately, Akane barely gave her more than a half-hearted curious glance before looking back at the fighting guests. "Not surprised you didn't hear me over that racket. Pair of show-offs," she said.

Nabiki smirked. "And yet you can't stop watching them either. Somebody's still sore about losing to a 'show-off' yesterday, aren't they?"

At that, Akane let out a wordless noise of indignation, sticking her nose up in the air disdainfully. That made it her turn to jump when Soun spoke up, the Tendo patriarch having come to the dining room for breakfast.

"Come now, Akane, it's nothing shameful; there's always someone better. Ranma worked hard to get as good as he did. I'm confident that with some dedicated practice and hard training, you'll catch up in no time," he consoled her. Then he looked out at the lawn and frowned. "I will speak to Saotome about not making quite so much noise during his morning sparring sessions, though."

Nabiki couldn't help but privately agree; the curse was one thing, but if she had to wake up at the crack of dawn every morning because of a little brawl, well, that would be the end of this marriage. Even as she thought that, Kasumi entered the dining room and laid out dishes on the table, before taking her customary seat.

"Mr. Saotome? Ranma? Breakfast is ready!" Kasumi called out, her voice sweet and carefree as normal, as if it were an everyday event to see people fighting like the Saotomes in her yard.

"Breakfast, you say? We'll be right there, Kasumi dear," Genma said, in between trying to keep Ranma pinned in a chokehold. Unfortunately for him, that distraction was all the time Ranma needed to grab his-her father's gi and fling him forward into the pond, where he landed with a mighty splash.

Adjusting her gi, the boy-turned-girl strode over to the dining room with a smile. "Breakfast? Thank you, Kasumi. It smells great," she said politely. Then she stopped when she saw Nabiki. "Oh. Um..."

Nabiki bit her tongue; she wanted to say something comforting, she really did, but... not in front of an audience. Instead, she just nodded and gestured at the spot next to her. She saw Ranma bite her lip, but after a moment's hesitation, she hesitantly sat down beside her.

The tension in the air was palpable... until Genma lumbered in and proceeded to sit down between them both, forcing them to scramble partially aside to avoid being squished under damp panda. Neither was quite sure if they appreciated the excuse, or if they were annoyed at his rudeness.

Oblivious to the feelings of his son-daughter and future daughter-in-law, Genma reached for his bowl of miso soup and rice... only for Kasumi to snatch it away. "Growf?"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Saotome, but pandas don't eat people food. Here, I made you some panda food earlier," Kasumi replied, before whipping out a platter of bamboo shoots out from behind herself and placing it in front of the part-time panda.

"...Where did you find that?" Nabiki asked, staring at her elder sister like she couldn't decide on being impressed or disturbed by the sudden shrub procurement, with Akane nodding her agreement to the sentiment.

"A good hostess always prepares for her guests," Kasumi replied serenely, giving her usual happy smile. It made a rather effective poker face, Nabiki noticed.

 _'That answers... absolutely nothing...'_ Nabiki thought to herself, opening her mouth to press the matter further, her curiosity remaining unsatiated. Then her stomach growled, and she blushed slightly as another part of her body declared it too needed appeasement. _'And I don't really care; let's eat!'_

Ranma had already taken her breakfast bowl and was scarfing down its contents quickly, lest Genma try and steal it from her. It wouldn't be the first time, after all, and she was much too hungry to put up with that nonsense today.

Luckily, he didn't seem to want to make a fuss, instead picking up a bamboo stalk and giving it a sour look before biting into it with a loud crunch. _'These people are weird,'_ Ranma thought to herself. _'But the food's great!'_

As the six ate their way through breakfast, peace settled back onto the dining room, broken only by the sounds of munching and utensils clicking on bowls and plates. Ranma and Nabiki didn't speak to each other, but they both visibly relaxed, not that either of them knew that.

Just as the meal reached its close and dishes were being set aside to be picked up and taken for washing, Soun cleared his throat with a cough and spoke up. "Once you're done, Ranma, you'll need to go and have a bath. When you're ready, Nabiki will escort you to Furinkan High School - you'll begin attending there today."

"Wait, what!?" Ranma blurted out, looking at Soun dumbfounded. "Why am I going to school?"

"I know that the first term of the year started some time ago, but they found a place to fit you in," Soun replied calmly, his face the perfect image of a stern Japanese patriarch as he laid down the law to Ranma. "Surely , you didn't think you'd be living here and not attend school, surely?"

"I... ah... never thought about it," Ranma admitted, before her face brightened with the light of inspiration. "But I don't even have any school books!" she protested.

"Growf!" went Genma, who promptly drop a school book satchel on the table in front of Ranma, who eyed it like a rattlesnake, her plan of retreat cut off before she'd evidently even thought of it.

"How long have you been planning this?" she asked suspiciously, not willing to touch it to check if the books were new or even bought.

"And where was he hiding it?" Nabiki asked, unable to stop herself craning her neck to see the dimensions of the school bag and contemplate how it would fit...somewhere on a panda.

"That's not important. Now, hurry up and go get clean and changed, Ranma; you don't want to be late for your first day at school, now do you?" Soun replied, relying on the power of 'seeming to know what he is doing' to goad Ranma into following along. It almost worked before his youngest piped up.

"Why does Nabiki have to take him there, anyway? She's in the grade above us," Akane pointed out, a legitimate question to Soun's consternation. But the Japanese patriarch rallied.

"She's his fiancee; of course she should show him the way. It's only proper," Soun declared, with solemn dignity that made 'Penma,' as Nabiki mentally coined him, snort with knowing derision.

And, just like that, Nabiki's appetite went sour. The... 'normalcy', for lack of a better word, had helped her forget it, but Soun's words had just brought home everything weighing on her mind about the engagement and Ranma's curse. She looked down at her bowl, and then gently pushed it aside. "I'm full, Kasumi. I'll go grab my books and wait for you, Ranma," she said, not looking at her betrothed as she did.

"Um... kay," Ranma replied quietly. From the corner of her eye, Nabiki could just about make out the downcast look on her face around Genma's fuzzy bulk. The gi-clad redhead then lifted her bowl to her mouth and chugged the remaining contents in a single swallow - to Nabiki's surprise and Kasumi's visible discomfort - before putting the bowl on the table and placing her hands together in the traditional gesture. "Thanks for the food, Kasumi. It was wonderful," Ranma said, and then she quietly got up and left the dining room.

* * *

About 5 or 10 minutes later...

* * *

The streets between Nabiki's home at the Tendo dojo and Furinkan High School were a familiar sight to her - as they should be for somebody in her second year. But, today of all days, they also felt a little alien... which probably had to do with the fact that today, she was being accompanied by somebody other than one of her sisters. Akane had raced on ahead whilst Nabiki was waiting for Ranma to get out of the bath, and so it just left her with her new fiance.

Or maybe it was the fact he was walking along the nearest fence-line as casually as she was walking the street. Seriously, how did he not fall down from there? He didn't look like he needed to try to hold his balance!

But Nabiki didn't ask. The awkward silence from the dining room still lingered, clinging to them like their own personal cloud of hesitation. Which made it quite surprising when Ranma suddenly up and broke it, startling Nabiki from her internal mental recursion.

"I... I'm sorry, Nabiki," he said, his voice soft and sad.

"Sorry? What for?" Nabiki asked, her response more instinctual than thought out, and she wanted to smack herself as soon as she realized what she'd said. _'Way to sound cool and in control, Nabiki,'_ she mentally groused.

"For... I don't know, for coming here, I guess? You had a life until yesterday, and now I screwed it all up. All because my pops and yours decided you had to get married to a freak," Ranma replied bitterly, maintaining his perfect balance walking on the fence even as he hunched in on himself. This had been weighing on him ever since his unwanted revelation the previous evening, and he just couldn't hold it back anymore.

Ever since the incident at the springs he'd felt like he was losing control of his life and last night had only exacerbated that feeling.

 _'Okay, now's your chance to make up for last night...'_ Nabiki thought to herself. She always had been the Tendo daughter best at figuring out what she wanted and going for it, and Ranma's behavior had actually made it easier than she had anticipated.

"Ranma? Look, you don't have anything to apologize for," she told him... before stopping and looking up at him expectantly. "Hey, can you come down here? It's easier to say this when I'm not craning my neck," she added with a bit of wry humor in her voice.

A wide-eyed Ranma nodded and stepped off of the fence, dropping lightly to the pavement next to her. "But..." he began.

"But nothing," Nabiki interjected, not wanting to give him a chance to derail her. "Look, I'm not going to insult you by lying; yes, the turning into a girl thing is kind of weird to say nothing of your father turning into an endangered species. But that's not your fault, as was made _abundantly_ clear last night. And it's not like either the curse or the engagement were your ideas as well. So don't beat yourself up over them, okay?"

"But... last night?" Ranma replied, feeling very lost, his hands waving a bit out of sheer need to do **something** with them.

"I mean, I'd just learned that magic was real, which rocked my world to begin with. That it happened to be because you transform when wet is just icing on the cake," Nabiki mock grumbled, giving Ranma a little smile to remove the sting of her words. The more she talked, the more confident she felt. Now she was feeling more like her old self, talking someone into seeing things her way. "I mean, talk about a paradigm shift; it was a lot to process, you know?"

At this, Ranma managed a wry snort. "Trust me, it's worse when you're the one changing."

"Yeah, I'll bet. Anyway, my point is... I know we haven't known each other long, but you're obviously a nice guy, and you're really cute, so... yeah, I'm not dumping you any time soon. So stop beating yourself up over scaring me off, 'kay?" she asked, smiling sweetly at him, even fluttering her eyelashes for good measure. She had to suppress a giggle at the way this made Ranma blush; oh yeah, teasing him was going to be _fun_.

Ranma looked at her with wide, shocked eyes. "You heard me this morning..." he said, audibly and visibly mortified, the blush as red as his female form's hair.

"Every...single...word," Nabiki confirmed, her grin taking on a more mischievous cast that would be familiar, and dreaded, to others at Furinkan High. "So chin up, cutie; I'm not saying we should have the ceremony today, but I want to get to know you better and see if we can work out. Deal?"

"D-deal," Ranma stammered, his blush still strong... but also smiling sincerely, a sight that made Nabiki's heart flutter briefly.

 _'Damn, girl; you might still have hit a jackpot after all...'_ Nabiki thought to herself with increasing smugness, the thought of being able to stick it to those who said she'd never be able to find someone by showing up at Furinkan High School with a cute, and seemingly caring, hunk on her arm warming the cockles of her heart.

 _'I have got to make this work... what are the odds I'll find another girl who can look past the curse?'_ Ranma thought to himself.

At that exact same moment, two other ladies, one with purple pigtails, and another dressed in men's fashion, sneezed in unison without noticing before continuing to go about their day

After a few moments of mutual contemplation, Nabiki managed to drag herself back from staring at her fiance and tilted her head towards the direction of the high school. "Alright, now, let's get to school, shall we? Don't want to be late on your first day."

Ranma simply nodded, and the two resumed their leisurely walk, albeit with a much more relaxed atmosphere between them. They had plenty of time, after all, and there was no longer any damp quilt of hesitation stifling their enjoyment of each other's company.

It wasn't long before they reached the gates to Furinkan High School. What Ranma saw when he stepped through the gates, though, made him stop and stare, dumbfounded. "What the heck?" he asked, as he took in the sight of Akane Tendo being mobbed by a veritable army of guys from what looked like every martial arts and sports club Furinkan High had, with footballers and tennis players alongside karate guys and wrestlers.

And regardless of club, each was taking a thorough pounding from a very pissed off teenage girl.

It was... well, in all honesty, it was one of the most surreal experiences Ranma had ever had if he was going to be frank. Guys just weren't supposed to **do** things like that to girls... Maybe Akane had a reason for her whole 'pervert!' schtick Ranma contemplated

Realizing Ranma had stopped following her, Nabiki turned back to him, and then walked over to stand by him again. "Oh, that's just my baby sister's fanclub," Nabiki replied once she was back level with Ranma, waving a hand dismissively. To tell the truth,she'd been honestly afraid for Akane in the face of this 'exercise' at first, but after days of watching her effortlessly pound the morons flat, the whole matter had gotten a little blaise.

"This happen often?" Ranma asked.

"Try every school morning," Nabiki replied. A quick glance at the clock showed they had plenty of time, so she felt no need to risk getting in the line of fire. She'd wait here for Akane to finish, then cross.

"...Why? What's all this about?" Ranma said incredulously, his hands framing the brawl like a bizarre tableau. Since Nabiki showed no signs of moving, he decided to follow her lead.

"At the start of the semester, our school had this big public speaking contest. Tatewaki Kuno, this idiot from my classroom, got up in front of the whole school and declared that if anyone wanted to date Akane Tendo, they had to either beat her in a fight, or go through him first. The result... well, you can see for yourself," she shrugged as Akane bodily slammed a gi-clad karate practitioner into a nearby tree.

"And they actually went along with this nonsense?" Ranma asked, dumbfounded. Suddenly, Akane's nasty attitude towards his arrival made a lot more sense...

"Yeah. Kuno's a moron, but he's also the champion of our kendo club - he's considered the toughest fighter in our school." As Akane floored a wrestler who looked to be nearly twice her height and three times her weight with one punch to the face, Nabiki amended herself, "I mean, after Akane, of course."

"Of course," Ranma responded dryly; Akane wasn't bad, as he could attest, but a good two thirds of the fighters were either holding back or just awful so the bar was a bit...wobbly in Ranma's opinion. Then he saw something that caught his eye, and turned his attention back to Nabiki.

"I take it that's him now?" he asked, pointing at a youth in a kendo uniform and wielding a bokken who was striding across the field now that the last of Akane's other fighters had fallen.

"Got it in one. Come on, let's get you to the office to be assigned; Akane can take care of him without any problems..."

* * *

In Room 1-F, as final bell rings...

* * *

Akane sighed as she settled into her seat. Much as she hated the annoyance of having to do it every morning, she had to admit; pounding the snot out of Kuno and his lamebrained lackies really was cathartic, especially after her humiliation the previous evening. Still, at least she hadn't been stuck with the freaky jerk - that would have been the worst! And now school would be a perfect refuge from him. Yes, she could just relax, concentrate on her school work, and pretend like everything was normal...

"Class? We have a new student joining us today. Please say hello to Ranma Saotome, who will be joining us after a recent visit to China."

Akane froze dead. No; no, she couldn't have...

Slowly, reluctantly, she looked up and saw that Ranma was indeed standing at the front of the classroom, looking uncertainly around the room... until he spotted her, then he just looked glum. Akane felt a flash of anger at his reaction; who did he think he was? She had a right to be annoyed with him for intruding on her classtime!

But she bit her tongue and didn't kick up a fuss, even as he was directed to an empty desk too close to her own for comfort. Instead, she deliberately ignored him and focused on the teacher. And as Ranma pulled out his school books with the rest of them, it seemed like he was at least willing to return that courtesy.

So much for school being a refuge... she should have known better than to tempt fate like that.

* * *

Lunch time at Furinkan High...

* * *

When the lunch bell rang, Akane was part of the students who chose to leave the desks behind and head outside to eat. It was a nice day and, frankly, she didn't want to be cooped up with Ranma any longer than she had to. Finding herself a nice shady tree, she sat down and was soon joined by her friends; Yuka, Sayuri, Makoto and Shikako, who swarmed to join her on the soft grass.

Unfortunately, her hopes of a nice friendly lunch together were dashed when Yuka asked, "So, Akane, what do you think of the new guy in the class?"

Akane grimaced; she really didn't want to talk about Ranma.

Shikako noticed Akane's reaction and shook her head. "Oh, please, Yuka; don't you think Akane's got enough trouble with boys already?" She said, patting Akane's shoulder in commiseration.

"Well, yeah... but he seemed nice, didn't he? Not a perverted jerk like those losers who listen to Kuno," Yuka replied, idly brushing her fingers through her long, light-brown hair.

"How can you tell? He didn't even say a word when the teacher introduced him," Makoto replied. Then she dashed Akane's hopes of sanity by grinning and adding, "But then, the strong silent type is kind of cute, don't you think?"

Akane wrestled with the notion of whether or not she really wanted to shoot down her mullet-headed friend's thought process by revealing that Ranma was engaged to her elder sister. She didn't really feel the need to protect Nabiki's privacy or anything like that, but at the same time, she didn't particularly want to be associated with Ranma in public either.

...And of course the moment she thought that, Sayuri had to grin and replied to Makoto, "Well, if you think he's cute, you're in luck; he's coming this way!"

The five girls looked up from each other and, sure enough, Ranma was striding briskly towards them, lazily raising an arm in a wave as he drew close. "Yo, Akane," he called out.

"What do you want?" Akane asked with ill grace; yes, she wasn't outright furious at him like she was the night before, but Akane was still the type to give a grudge a really good squeeze before letting go.

"Hey, don't get your hair in a knot. Do you know where Nabiki is? I thought I'd go see her while it's lunchtime," Ranma replied defensively. So she'd lost a spar; didn't have to keep biting his head off, sheesh..

For the briefest moment, Akane considered telling him to get lost... but then she reconsidered; it wasn't like it was an arduous request, and besides, telling him would get him out of her hair. "I'm not really sure. If she's not in her homeroom of 2-E, then she's probably sitting somewhere quiet and out of the way. She doesn't socialize much during lunch - likes her privacy," Akane explained to the newcomer. She privately added, _'For her money grubbing and blackmailing,'_ in the security of her own head; she doubted Nabiki would be able to hide her little 'business' from Ranma for long, but she didn't feel comfortable revealing it herself. It just didn't feel fair to her sister.

"I see... thanks, Akane, at least I know where to start looking," Ranma said, shrugging lightly, and then jogged off.

 _'Huh. That... actually wasn't so painful,'_ Akane thought to herself feeling pleasantly surprised. Then the thought withered on the proverbial vine as her best friends turned to her with amazed looks. "Akane, you know him? He knows your sister?" they asked in unison, eyes gleaming like hunters at the prospect of some **very** juicy gossip.

 _'Oh, great...'_

Meanwhile, Nabiki had set herself up under a tree not all that far away. Contrary to what Akane had said, she was not that far removed from the other students at all, sitting just far enough away to have her privacy.

Well, she would have it, if a certain loudmouthed kendo club-member from her homeroom hadn't thrust his presence into the situation. Not that it was entirely unwelcome, since he'd had the foresight to bring his wallet with him, but if not for that, he was one person she'd be happy to go about her day without seeing.

"There you are, Kuno. Those are all the shots I have today. You want 'em?" She asked rhetorically, showing off the last of the snaps she'd taken the previous afternoon.

Kuno was practically trembling with joy (at least, she hoped it was joy) as he ogled the shots of Akane's workout routine. "What strength! What power! She is truly a tigress amongst kittens!" he declared dramatically, a disquieting light in his eyes as he perused the lot. "I'll take them all!"

"That'll be a thousand yen per photo," Nabiki replied, with her usual level of poisoned sweetness that, as it often did, seemingly went over Kuno's head.

At those words, Kuno looked shocked, pulled out of his...reverie by the sound of his wallet crying in terror. "I protest! The heavens themselves would weep at that price!"

Nabiki was about to retort, when another voice suddenly rang out. "Hey, Nabiki! There you are!" She looked away from her classmate to see Ranma, walking over to her with a wave and a smile. "I've been looking all over for you," he said, visibly smiling in his satisfaction at finding her.

"Excuse me, but I was having a conversation with Nabiki Tendo first," Kuno replied with a scowl, a sneer of disdain marring his visage... not that he was particularly appealing to begin with, in Nabiki's completely unbiased opinion.

Ranma just blinked at him as if only now noticing the upperclassman's presence. "Oh, hey. You're that bozo from this morning," he said, as casually as one would comment on the weather.

"Bozo!?" Kuno spluttered in outrage, whilst Nabiki bit her lip, concern helping her to squash the immediate humor she saw in one of Furinkan High's biggest jerks being verbally cut down like that. There was no way this was going to end well...

"Well, yeah. You organized a bunch of thugs to beat up a girl every morning 'cuz you wanna go out with her. Most people who aren't morons would have just asked her, ya know," Ranma replied, smirking at his evident superior knowledge of the workings of the feminine mind.

"Impudent whelp! Who are you!" Kuno thundered, whipping out his ever-present bokken and pointing it at Ranma, the wooden practice sword practically vibrating with Kuno's indignation.

To Nabiki's mild surprise, her fiance didn't look even the slightest afraid. Instead, he was actually smiling, like he enjoyed the prospect of a fight. Ranma jabbed a thumb at himself, ready to speak, only to be cut off by Kuno's ego.

"But wait! Is it not the custom to give one's own name first? Fine then! Mine I shall give!" Kuno declared. Striking a dramatic pose, sword upheld towards the heavens, he proclaimed, "I am the undefeated captain of this school's kendo club! The rising new star of the high school fencing world! The sound of my voice strikes fear into the hearts of my enemies! My peers call me the Blue Thunder of Furinkan High!" And now he swept his sword down with a deliberate swish of ruffled air, before adding in a more normal voice, "Tatewaki Kuno, age seventeen."

Tendo and Saotome stared at him in mutual disbelief, Ranma's jaw having fallen open in his dumbfoundedness at his upperclassman's antics with his right eyebrow twitching from all the conflicting expressions his brain was telling it to show at once. Even Nabiki couldn't resist what she said next; "Weren't you calling yourself 'The Shooting Star' just last week?"

"Pfft. An ignoble title that failed to captured my true magnificence," Kuno replied with aplomb, brushing a forelock aside with practiced disdain. "But I digress! Your name and business, lowborn wretch!"

Ranma blinked for a moment, shook his head as if to keep the stupid from settling, and then replied levelly, "I'm Ranma Saotome, of the Saotome School of Anything Goes Martial Arts. I was looking for Nabiki... but if I found myself a fight, that's fine too."

"Hmph. It's obvious you are as ignorant as you are rude, Saotome." Kuno scoffed, his ego propelling his speech into the realm of delusional boasting. "You honestly believe you can stand against me on the field of combat?"

"I know I can," Ranma replied instantly, his body and tone casual as only real confidence and self-assurance could provide.

Nabiki couldn't help but snigger, whilst it was Kuno's turn to stare at him, mouth open and dumbstruck. After a moment, he visibly shook himself back to his senses, scowling as he tightened his grip on his bokken's hilt and shifted into a combat stance.

"What! Very well then, you ruffian; if you wish a reminder of your rightful place... have at you!"

Now a chill ran down Nabiki's spine as Kuno suddenly charged at Ranma; yes, Ranma had done surprisingly well against Akane the previous evening, but Kuno wasn't just making empty boasts! He might have the brains of a bowl of miso soup, but he was a legitimately strong fighter, and she'd always suspected he could beat Akane in their morning brawls if he wasn't holding back out of some twisted mixture of honor and lust. "Watch out!" she called to her new fiance...

Then she stared in disbelief as Ranma sprang backwards as if rocket-propelled, a standing backflip that brought him clear over their heads and over what looked like close to two meters backwards. Okay, maybe he knew what he was doing after all...

Kuno rushed forward,swinging his weapon in swift, powerful strikes- not a one of which connected. Nabiki could hardly keep up with the action, and her heart clenched as she saw just how narrowly Ranma seemed to dodge them. Worse, Ranma wasn't striking back - Kuno was the only one attacking.

Unbeknownst to Nabiki, Kuno was growing quite perturbed. He'd never had an opponent who could dodge him as easily as this; the impertinent newcomer didn't waste a single movement. Neither strike nor thrust seemed to be able to touch him. Furrowing his brow, he took a wide swing at his opponent's waist, only for this 'Ranma Saotome' to spring backwards away from it, clearing a waist-high shrub in the bargain. Irritated, Kuno strode forward, chopping down the obstruction with an effortless flick of his bokken. "You're a slippery one, aren't you?"

"Or maybe you're just not as good as you think you are," Ranma replied with a lazy shrug. He wasn't even breathing hard at this point.

"Heh, look, somebody's taking on Kuno!" came a shout from across the field. Out of the corner of their eyes, the two combatants watched as curious students flocked to the sight. To Ranma's confusion, once they saw Nabiki, they surged towards her. He wondered what that was all about.

Kuno simply smirked at the sight. "So, that's her game, is it? You're a pawn of Nabiki Tendo's? How much is she paying you to lure me into this unseemly little farce? Or were you a dupe of hers?"

"Just what are you talking about?" Ranma snapped back, frowning angrily. He didn't like this Kuno guy on principle, but he wasn't going to let him badmouth his fiancee, that was for certain!

"Oh, come now; no one would want to see a heartless mercenary like Nabiki Tendo if they did not either have business with her or were under her thumb," Kuno replied as if stating a simple truth on the same level that water was wet. Not that that was going to save him...

"...You're going to regret that," Ranma said darkly, curling his fingers into fists so tightly so that his joints audibly popped and crackled. His dad had drummed it into his head with surprising thoroughness to not be a bully, but Genma always had possessed a rather flexible definition of the term... besides, if anyone deserved a knuckle sandwich at this moment, it was Kuno.

"Kuno, leave Nabiki's new fiance alone!" came a shout, one that made everybody's head snap towards the direction of Akane Tendo, currently running onto the scene.

Nabiki went pale with horror. _'Akane, you_ _ **idiot**_ _!'_ she thought to herself, palm snapping to her forehead with an audible clap. _'Not in front of everyone!'_

"Fiance? You're engaged to marry Nabiki Tendo?" Kuno asked his foe, looking between his beloved Akane and the insolent Ranma with a dumbfounded expression.

"Not that it's any of your business but yeah, we're engaged," Ranma replied, still in a fighting stance, not seeing what this had to do with Kuno's imminent pummeling of Great Justice.

"Our parents arranged everything, it's not Nabiki's idea," Akane interjected, speaking up to be heard over the clamour of students trying to ask Nabiki for confirmation.

"Pft. An arranged marriage? How quaint and old-fashioned," Kuno declared, relaxing out of his combat stance.

 _'Says the wanna-be samurai,'_ Nabiki sourly thought to herself, her second hand joining the first in now pressing into her temples to stave off the impending headache Akane's bullheaded behavior was inducing.

"If this is true, then our quarrel has ended. There is little punishment I could dish out that the heavens have not already heaped upon your unworthy head," Kuno proclaimed 'magnanimously, running his fingers through his hair in a lazy combing.

 _'You are going to be paying double, no, triple the price for your next batch of photos, jerk!'_ Nabiki declared within the privacy of her own head, scowling furiously at Kuno and immediately plotting the many and _painful_ ways she'd be gouging his wallet.

"You know... I didn't come over here to start a fight. But if you wanted a little spar, well, that was no skin off my nose," Ranma said, conversationally as if talking about the weather. "But you just went and made this personal."

"Oh, really?" Kuno replied smugly, his usual cocky smirk on his face as he leisurely raised his bokken again.

Nabiki blinked... and it was over. The undignified sound of air noisily and roughly expelling itself from someone's lungs filled the air, and there was Ranma, standing in front of Kuno, who was now bent over Ranma's fist embedded in his solar plexus. Furinkan High's most fearsome warrior (after Akane Tendo) gagged and choked softly, whilst Ranma, in the same light and airy tone as before, said, "You shouldn't oughta have done that." A blur of motion, and Ranma had delivered a spin-kick to Kuno's head, sending him flying across the ground and crashing to earth in a limp bundle of limbs and clothing.

Dead silence fell across the school ground, broken only by the sharp, wince-inducing cracks of Ranma's neck as he methodically bent it from side to side. He looked straight at Nabiki, Kuno's body laying in the background...

And then, with a perfect sense of ironic humor, the school bell rang, sounding the start of the next period. Ranma visibly wilted, sighing audibly. "Never mind... I'll see you after school, Nabiki."

And with that, he turned and headed for homeroom, leaving the other students gawping in his wake. After a moment, they too began to disperse, heading for their respective homerooms and chattering about what they'd seen, with one or two of Kuno's flunkies grabbing the unconscious kendo master and dragging him off to the nurse's.

But it was the Tendo sisters who had the most to think about what they'd seen.

Nabiki was... well, to say she was conflicted was to put it mildly. She had never, in her life, had anyone stand up for her like that. Even her own sister wouldn't usually act in that protective a manner. Oh, Akane would physically defend her, but she wouldn't take insults to Nabiki so... personally. Nabiki had always prided herself on being able to stand up for herself, but having a guy actually come to her defense like that? ...Well, she'd be lying if she said she didn't rather enjoy it.

Oh, and she was also going to get back at her sister for blurting out the news about her engagement in front of all those other students, but that would wait.

Akane, meanwhile, was unsure what to think about everything. She had to admit, it was kind of impressive seeing Kuno taken down like that. She knew from the last evening that Ranma was good - but now she couldn't argue that it was some kind of fluke. And seeing him get mad at Kuno bad-mouthing her sister? Well... maybe he wasn't a total jerk after all. That curse was still way too freaky, though.

But with the last bells chiming and students hurrying back to their homerooms, they had far bigger things to focus on, at least for the immediate future.

* * *

3PM, End of School Day

* * *

The final school bell had never sounded so welcoming to Nabiki Tendo as it did this afternoon. Luckily, one of the perks of having a reputation as the school's resident deal-making ice queen was that few people were willing to risk asking her about Akane's little bombshell, despite it making the gossip rounds. So, she'd managed to enjoy a certain amount of privacy during the day - even if she had needed to promise Kikuko and Ryonami to give them a personal explanation the next day. Still, it was a huge relief to finally be out of school and heading away from staring eyes and gossiping whispers.

Now the only thing that was missing was her fiance... where was he?

And with perfect timing, Ranma's face suddenly dropped down in front of hers, upside down but visibly smiling. "Hey there. Going my way?" he asked, even as Nabiki literally jumped in shock.

"Where'd you come from!?" she yelped instinctively. Then she forcibly pulled herself back together, and looked him over curiously, realizing he was hanging by his feet from an overhanging branch. "And why are you hiding in a tree?"

"Eh, all the nosy jerks in school wanted to bug me after Akane made her big announcement. So I took the route they couldn't follow," Ranma explained, leisurely dropping down from the branch and twisting in mid-air to land on his feet.

"Understandable. I would have done the same if I could," Nabiki admitted, privately enjoying the way Ranma's body flexed. Yes, things were weird but lookit that butt! _'No, bad Nabiki, no perving!'_ She admonished herself; she had to focus.

"So, what was the deal with that jerk Kuno? Why was he hanging around you when I found you, anyway?" Ranma asked her quizzically, tilting his head to try to catch her gaze.

Now Nabiki froze up; what was she supposed to say? She didn't want to ruin Ranma's favorable opinion of her by admitting the... less than savory things he did to fatten her pocket money budget. But at the same time, he was going to find out eventually - it was inevitable - and if he found out later, he'd take it even worse.

 _'...Wow. This must be how he felt about telling me about the curse, huh. Irony's a bitch,'_ a tiny part of Nabiki's mind noted. The rest of her mind was racing, trying to figure out what to do... before her confident side firmly settled into place. She could do this - it was just a matter of spinning it right! And nobody in the Tendo family could spin a story like Nabiki.

"He wanted to do some business with me," she explained, putting on a smile to add to the relaxed tone she was using and make what she said seem more light and inconsequential.

"Funny way of showing it, the names he was calling you," Ranma noted sourly, frowning at the memory and making Nabiki's smile unconsciously deepen in response.

"Those names are actually partially why he wanted to do business. The school calls me things like that because they all want my services, but they hate the prices they have to pay for them," Nabiki explained levelly, shrugging away the insults with the ease of long practice.

"Services? Business?" Ranma asked, his expression growing concerned.

Nabiki took a deep breath and began to explain. "Daddy tries but, well, his allowance just doesn't stretch as far as it needs to," she said. "So, when I learned about economics back in middle school, I realized that I had a solution. I supply things that my fellow students want, and in return, they provide me with things that I want," she concluded with a grin, before stepping towards him and spinning around to lean her back gently against his front.

Ranma was startled, but he immediately moved to keep her from falling, skin prickling from the unfamiliar, but distinctly not unwelcome, feeling of a soft female body in his arms.

Privately, Nabiki wondered if maybe she wasn't overdoing it... but from Ranma's reaction, this definitely seemed like a way to keep him from delving too deeply into the less than savory nature of her business deals. Of course, it didn't hurt that there was a rather delicious tingling feeling from being held like this...

Pushing that aside, Nabiki added, "So, yes, all it is are my fellow students being hypocrites. I give them things they want, and they badmouth me for it."

"What kind of things do you do?" Ranma asked her, doing his damndest to remember his father's lessons on being a gentleman in this sort of situation... which was surprisingly tricky when most of his brain was imitating a bomb shelter alarm, screaming _'GIRL! GIRL! GIRL! GIRL!'_ at the top of its metaphorical lungs.

"Oh, little things. When there's competitions of some sort or another, I run betting rings. If people are worried about tests or projects I arrange for some extra tutelary help. I obtain photographs of girls and guys for people with crushes. Little things like that," Nabiki flippantly replied. It was strangely comfortable being pressed up against Ranma like this...mmm, were those muscles she could feel through his shirt? Nice...

"Is that all? Huh, okay, thanks for telling me," Ranma replied sincerely.

 _'What.'_ Nabiki blinked as Ranma's words registered. She'd been hoping to do damage control with her spin on things, but Ranma sounded... blaise. That reaction hadn't been on the cards, and that left her a touch disoriented and vulnerable for the second time in as many days. "You don't mind?" she asked, unable to resist.

"Hey, I grew up on the road. You think pops was swimming in steady, reliable jobs? We had to get... creative about keeping our finances up, or we went hungry. Okay, we still went hungry now and then, but not because we weren't willing to work. So I seriously doubt that there's anything you've done that I probably haven't done something similar. Besides, if all your photos are as tame as these, what's the harm?"

 _'Again, what?'_ Truly confused now, Nabiki stepped away from her fiance so she could look him in the eyes... and her heart skipped a beat as she realized he was looking at the photos of Akane that she had been offering to Kuno at lunch time. Frantically checking her pockets on auto-pilot, which confirmed what her eyes were telling her, she blurted out, "How did you - you picked my pocket?!"

Ranma smirked at her indignant expression, a wry and confident expression that made her heart skip another beat. "Like I said, we found creative ways to keep ourselves fed on the road. So, yeah, I understand where you're coming from, okay?" he asked, handing her the photos back.

"That's impressive... and honestly a little terrifying. I never felt your hands...what else can you do with them?" she asked, giving him a mischievous smile, which only deepened when he blushed, having obviously picked up on the innuendo. _'Gotcha.'_

"Buy me something nice and I'll tell you," Ranma retorted, and now it was his turn to smile as Nabiki blushed, if not as profusely as he had. _'Hah! Who said i couldn't talk to girls? Oh yeah, eat it, pops!'_ He mentally crowed

"Well... you like fast food? There's a nice burger joint not too far from Furinkan, and we never did get to have lunch together," she replied. It hadn't exactly been hard to figure out why Ranma had been looking for her at lunch, and after today's stunt? Well, paying for her own after-school snack was the least she could do to thank him.

"Sounds great; lead the way," Ranma said, smiling happily.

As the two teens started walking off, both shared the same thought; _'This engagement might turn out alright after all...'_

* * *

Chapter End & Closing Notes

* * *

And that's the end of our second chapter. Hope to see you guys all again much sooner than this one took!

I actually did some research on how Japanese school days work and... well, I'll be honest, it kind of left me more confused than when I started, because we've seen Ranma and Akane having lunch both outside and in their classrooms. So I'm going to just have to make things up to some extent. It isn't ideal, but, hey, Ranma 1/2 was never the most realistic of stories to begin with, and it's not like the series itself didn't play around with Japanese cultural realities.

Because I can foresee these being brought up, allow me to head these questions off at the pass:

1: Why are Ranma and Nabiki so much friendlier towards each other than Ranma and Akane were in canon?

Simple answer? Because Nabiki isn't Akane. What a lot of Akane's fans don't like to admit is that, in the first two episodes (or 4 manga chapters), Akane is really quite a jerk to Ranma. She repeatedly insults him, and physically assaults him (or at least tries to) whenever he retorts in kind. She builds up a strong negative impression with him that doesn't begin to change until Dr. Tofu intervenes. At the same time, Ranma's angry responses to Akane's words and actions just make her feel more affronted; it's a vicious cycle. Akane has a kneejerk "if it hurts me, ATTACK!" mentality, which does not mesh well with Ranma. Nabiki, however, doesn't have that same sort of temperament. She thinks first and acts second. So she doesn't build up the negative impression with Ranma, who in turn doesn't fight back. Thus, no vicious cycle of relationship issues.

2: How did Ranma beat Kuno so fast?

This one's easy; because even at this early point, Ranma drastically outclasses Kuno. Look at his first couple of fights against Kuno in canon; Kuno never lands a hit on Ranma until he's distracted in that last fight by seeing the photos of girl-Ranma and Akane, whilst Ranma doesn't even bother to attack Kuno until that same fight - which is when he puts Kuno down faster than Kuno can even blink. So, if Ranma feels like getting serious, which he does here, then he can stomp Kuno without even trying.


	3. Revenge! Rematch with Kuno!

Author's Notes:

Wow, you guys have been awesome; it's really making me feel welcome to be back here again now. I'll have to try to keep things coming more regularly!

To those who pointed out that this idea seems to be unique... I have to admit, I kind of expected that, but it still surprises me a little. But then, the alternative love interests pool for Ranma was never the largest part of the fandom, sadly.

And to those who asked about Shampoo & Ukyo? I'm afraid that would be spoilers. Suffice it to say that Nabiki is not Akane, but Ranma is still Ranma, and that means his life will always be weird and chaotic...

Also, to those who've been bringing up Ranma's shyness... firstly, he's going to move away from that now. Secondly, it's actually canon; look at the first episode of the series (or the first chapter of the manga). When Ranma initially arrives, he's very shy, meek, even timid when he's first interacting with the Tendos. Even after first revealing his true gender to them, he's shy and polite. It's not until Akane starts denouncing him as a pervert for their seeing each other naked in the bathroom that he gets aggressive in response. In this universe, with the less hostile Nabiki as his fiancee, Ranma is not pushed as sharply to act assertive. Now that he's had some time to really bond with Nabiki, to confirm that she's not going to lash out at him for being him, he's going to be more confident and assertive... whilst also having a far more positive opinion of her and a stronger bond with her than he had with Akane around this point in canon.

Finally, I'm really sorry about the delay in getting this out, but real life has just been kicking me and especially my editor around.

* * *

 _ **Chapter 3: Revenge! Rematch with Kuno!**_

* * *

It was not, as Nabiki would later reflect, your typical first date. And she would know, having been in her fair share of paid dates and date-like environments as part of her business dealings. Sitting on a circular bench beneath a tree, gulping down American-style greaseball burgers with fries and coca-cola from McDonalds as she and her companion chattered about trivialities from their lives would never have crossed her mind as the first option when it came to having a date.

...Maybe that was partially why it was so much fun?

"You're kidding!" Nabiki giggled, the last mouthful of her burger temporarily forgotten to prevent choking. "He actually stole the general's medals?"

"Medals, nothing!" Ranma grinned in response, taking a swift slurp from his coke. "He took the man's shirt, his pants, his underwear... only thing he left him with was his hat!"

Now Nabiki burst out laughing openly, shaking her head in disbelief. "He must have just loved that," she chuckled, before chomping down on the last mouthful of sauce-dripping bread, meat and cheese.

"Oh, yeah - we had to hightail it before his men gave us some extra holes. He even tried to hit us with an artillery strike! Lucky for us that we were faster than he was... still, those medals paid for a good night's sleep and a decent meal at the next village we came to," Ranma smirked. As paper rustled, he glanced at the takeout bag between them, raising an eyebrow inquisitively as Nabiki withdrew another burger from it. "Still hungry?" he asked, audibly bemused.

"Hmm?" Nabiki gave him an innocent look. "What's that?"

"That's your third Big Mac," Ranma pointed out.

"So what? That's your third Big Mac too," Nabiki replied cheerfully with a smirk on her face, pointing at the half-eaten burger - with fries piled inside of it - in Ranma's lap.

"Yeah, but **I** am a big strong martial artist who works his ass off in training every single day. **You** are a sweet, dainty schoolgirl with a cute little blob of sauce on her nose," Ranma quipped back, grinning at her before he promptly gulped down what was left of his burger in two bites.

Nabiki blinked as Ranma's words registered, trying not to betray the way her heart fluttered at his flirtations. A quick swipe of her fingers and the sauce was gone, allowing her to focus on giving Ranma a sultry smile. "Flattery will get you nowhere, handsome," she teasingly retorted, before unwrapping her food. "As for the burger... well, what can I say? I've always had a healthy appetite, and this is a rare treat for me. Besides, I always say you should get your money's worth when eating out."

' _Or somebody else's money's worth,'_ she privately added to herself. That had been partially where she'd developed the stomach capacity; if she was getting somebody else to pay for it, then she intended to stuff herself as full as she could get. Applying the same principle to when she was forced to shell out her own precious pocket money was a natural extension.

"Huh. Maybe our families aren't so different after all," Ranma commented, looking thoughtfully at his food.

"What?" Nabiki asked, baffled by his statement.

"It's just that my old man has similar sayings," Ranma explained with a nonchalant shrug. "You're much prettier than he is, though."

"You're cute... but you're not getting my burger," Nabiki teasingly retorted, before biting into her burger with an exaggeratedly enthusiastic 'nom!'.

Ranma replied by poking his tongue out at her, and promptly stole the last box of fries, for which his fiancee playfully swatted his shoulder.

* * *

That evening, at the Tendo residence...

* * *

"Where are they? It's almost dinner time - what could they possibly be doing out so late?" Akane complained, glancing back in the direction of the hallway for the umpteenth time. Despite her best efforts to remind herself that Nabiki usually seemed to know how to handle guys, she was still worried about her. She tapped her pencil on her homework absent-mindedly as she looked back to her homework.

"Oh, Akane, ease up; Ranma's a nice boy, I'm sure he and Nabiki are fine," Soun replied easily, trying to sooth his temperamental youngest daughter over what he was sure was baseless concern.

"Indeed; I raised Ranma to know how to treat women right," Genma interjected from his position at the deck, where he and Soun were playing a game of go. "Your sister will be perfectly safe. Didn't you say Ranma got into a fight to defend her honor at school today? Do you really think he'd then turn on her after that?"

Akane tried to come up with an answer to that, but even her protective sisterly instincts had to falter in the face of that logic. There was nothing she could think of to say that wouldn't make her sound like Kuno, and who wanted that? "I suppose not," she reluctantly conceded. "But where are they, then?"

And just then, as through she had been listening in for just the right moment, Nabiki's voice rang out from the doorway. "We're home!"

"Oh, welcome home, Nabiki, Ranma! Dinner will be ready soon," Kasumi called out from the kitchen, delicious smells an aromatic emphasis on Kasumi's assurance.

Akane twisted around from the TV as her sister and Ranma entered the living room, watching them both like a hawk. When she saw that Nabiki was perfectly fine, even smiling a little, she let herself become a little more relaxed, though she still wasn't happy about her sister's prolonged absence. "Where have you two been?" she demanded tartly, more out of form than any real concern at this point.

"Sorry we're late; I was showing Ranma around Nerima a little and we lost track of time," Nabiki replied casually, before she and Ranma sat down at the table.

Akane's eyebrow raised at the notion of what could have caused her usually punctual and precise elder sister to 'lose track of time' with a boy, but she chose to leave it alone for the moment.

Soun glanced up from his game board to look at his daughter and his soon-to-be son-in-law. "So, Nabiki, I heard that Ranma stood up from you in the face of a school-mate's insults?" he asked probingly.

Nabiki simply shrugged as she replied, "Yeah. It was just Kuno being a moron, nothing major." With Kuno, there were a lot of ways it could have gone worse, after all.

"Still, it seems like the two of you are growing quite close already. That's good. Fiancees should be close to each other-" Soun declared proudly, visibly puffing up in pride.

Before Soun could fully launch into his spiel, Nabiki held up a finger to cut off her father's grandstanding. "Ah-ah-ah, daddy. Don't go planning the wedding just yet. Ranma and I are still getting to know each other. I think we're going to be good friends, but don't you get carried away and try to rush things, understand?" She gave him a glare that reminded Soun of when his darling departed wife knew he was getting ahead of himself.

"Of course, Nabiki, I understand," Soun replied, his tone dripping with a benevolent patronization that made Ranma's own hackles stiffen, used as he was to violently correcting his own father when he felt he wasn't being taken seriously.

Perhaps fortunately for both parties, Kasumi chose that moment to come out and serve dinner, and Soun's words were forgotten in the face of something more important.

After an uneventful meal, the teens watched some television and ultimately went to bed.

* * *

The next morning...

* * *

Nabiki sat up in her bed, glowering fiercely at the window as the sounds of battle-cries and fist-fighting woke her up for the second morning in a row. "Again?!" she growled to herself. She had no complaints about Ranma, but Genma was starting to get on her nerves. Reluctantly conceding defeat - she hadn't a chance of getting back to sleep in that racket, and it would just make her late for school if she tried - Nabiki threw on her slippers and groggily shuffled down to the dining room.

"Come on, pop; didn't you promise Mr. Tendo we'd stop doing this so early? The Tendos want to sleep!" Ranma pointed out, emphasizing his words with an attempt to to deliver a snap-kick to his father's head.

"I did, and we have - we started a good fifteen minutes later today than we did yesterday!" Genma replied, simultaneously blocking Ranma's kick with a swift forearm and punching at him with the other, which Ranma dodged.

"That's a technicality and you know it!" the cursed youth pointed out, leaping backwards to get more room to maneuver.

Watching from the dining room, Nabiki couldn't help but smile at Ranma's willingness to side with her on the matter. It was a small comfort in the wake of being so rudely awoken, but at least it was some comfort. She and Akane watched as the two Saotomes leapt straight into the air to nearly two stories height, meeting in the middle of the yard and exchanging a rapid-fire flurry of punches, kicks and blocks whilst hovering in mid-air. It was a scene straight out of a shonen anime, and the Tendo girls could only marvel as they continued to defy gravity. Five seconds. Ten seconds...

"...Are you telling me he can fly?" Akane asked, skepticism, curiosity and amazement all warring in her face and voice.

With perfectly ironic timing, gravity caught up to both Ranma and his father right at that moment, and they dropped like stones into the koi pond, sending up an enormous splash.

"Guess he hasn't quite mastered that technique," Nabiki noted conversationally.

A sopping wet girl and a soaking panda clambered forth from the pond. Evidently, that was the signal for the end of their morning sparring match, as Ranma marched over to them, scowling all the way, whilst Genma found himself a large rock in the sun to sit on and try to dry some of the excess from his fur... once he'd had a good shake.

"Stupid old man… you got a nice koi pond, but I could really do without seeing so much of it from a koi's eye view," Ranma complained to the Tendo sisters, even as the neo redhead parked her tuckus down on the patio to the sound of a wet squelch from her sodden pants.

"Couldn't you just talk to him about it?" Akane asked,unable to resist her curiosity. Her father could be stubborn at times, yeah, but it wasn't like he was completely distant to reason.

"Pfft. Fat chance. Pops never has been too good about listening to others," Ranma replied conversationally... and then, with equal casualness, she pulled her soaking wet shirt up over her head and rung it out onto the lawn, letting her newly manifested breasts bounce freely in the morning sun before gravity settled them in their natural tear-drop shape.

"Gak!" went Akane, whose eyes practically doubled in size at the sight, her face flushed with mortification. "What do you think you're doing?! Don't you have any feminine modesty?!" she spluttered.

Ranma just gave the youngest Tendo a flat look. "Do I look like I should?" she asked dryly, letting the phrase 'considering I am a _guy_ ' go unsaid.

Akane let out a strangled, inarticulate noise of less than coherent thought, and then stormed off towards the kitchen, grumbling under her breath about things that Nabiki wasn't paying attention to.

Nabiki tried not to stare, honestly, but... it was just too hard. This wasn't her first time seeing Ranma's boobs out in the open, technically, but it was the first time the situation was letting her look at them calmly. "Um... Ranma? I'm sorry, but I just gotta ask..."

"Hm?" Ranma looked at Nabiki, followed her gaze, and then sighed in resignation, "No, I don't know why they're so big. I don't know where the red hair comes from, either. I think it's part and parcel of the curse, myself."

"Really? Why?" Nabiki asked, finally managing to wrench her gaze away from her boyfriend's most impressive rack. She was not a perv but it was still like the things had magnets attached to her eyes, dammit.

"Well, it's supposed to be a curse, right? So it should make your life harder when it turns on... well, are you telling me that guys aren't going to notice a girl with hair like this in Japan?" Ranma paused to gently tug a crimson forelock, "And tits like these?" she added, cupping and hefting the bountiful mammaries momentarily gracing her chest.

"Besides, big boobs like this means I gotta worry more about how I dress - you have any idea how hard it is to find a shirt that will even try to fit me in both forms? Forget trying to pass myself off as a guy on the fly!"

As she'd said this, Ranma had been scowling... but, after a moment, her face lightened and she playfully added, "Still, at least they have their perks too, right, Nabiki?" she chuckled, playfully bobbling her chest and making Nabiki's own heart beat a little faster. Not that she was into girls, or anything like that! She just... ah... had learned to understand what boys saw in girls to help with her photo-shoots, that was all. She was about to speak when she was cut off by a familiarly strident voice.

"You're unbelievable!" Akane shouted, making Nabiki jump - she hadn't even noticed her sister's return. But not as much as Ranma did when Akane suddenly poured a kettle full of boiling hot water.

Ranma might have started arguing with Akane then, but Nabiki didn't notice. She was too fascinated with the way water glistened as it slid down newly returned muscles, giving the now-masculine Ranma's chiseled torso the sort of shimmering gleam that visual arts aimed at attracting horny young women so loved to capture.

' _...Yummy...'_ Nabiki absently thought to herself, restraining the urge to reach out and give Ranma's nearest pectoral a thorough lick. And fortunately she did, as a newcomer entered the scene.

"Ranma? Would you please put a shirt on? It's time for breakfast," Kasumi gently chided her guest. Or perhaps she should start thinking of him as her new brother? From the look on Nabiki's face as she stared at the...admittedly well-built and distractingly topless youth, the eldest Tendo had her doubts that the wedding was going to be called off any time soon.

' _All I will need is the right time with a camera, and I'll have my own 'incriminating evidence' mufufufufu...'_ Kasumi mentally chortled. She may be the 'good girl' of the family, but that didn't preclude her wanting the chance to tease her normally unflappable younger sibling. It was the eldest's duty to embarrass the younger...or was it the mother's job...hmm..

"Huh? Okay, sorry Kasumi," Ranma said, giving his shirt another quick squeeze of moisture and then pulling it on. Not his favorite way to deal with being splashed, but he'd grown used to wearing damp clothing - another reason why he preferred silk.

It took everything Nabiki had not to call Kasumi a party pooper and had to settle for giving her elder sibling a quick scowl before smoothing her expression. Though Nabiki supposed that it was at least nice for giving her a distraction to collect herself... then again, could anyone really blame her for staring? Especially when Ranma chose that moment to stretch out and pull his still-wet, but apparently acceptable, shirt back on, which did very interesting things to his abs.

' _Oh my god, you could grind meat on them...'_ Nabiki caught herself thinking, then discretely tried to shake that image out of her head once Ranma sadly - safely, she meant safely - had them covered again.

Feeling her own stomach growl, Nabiki hastened over to the table. This time, she and Ranma sat down together in a way that made it obvious Genma was not welcome to interject himself this morning. The panda took the hint, fortunately, and instead seated himself at one of the shorter table ends.

Kasumi frowned gently at the sight of Genma's shaggy alternate body. "I'm sorry, Mr. Saotome, but I'm out of bamboo," she apologized, which made Nabiki sigh in relief internally, as a part of her was wondering if her eldest sister was pulling the oversized shrubbery out of hammerspace or something..

Genma let out a harsh growl and snatched up a bowl of rice and miso soup, hugging it possessively to his chest, a few hairs falling into the broth.

"Ah, don't worry about it, Kasumi - he can eat people food just fine. Heck, eating bamboo means he's got to stay a panda for a couple of hours, or he'll get a horrible stomach-ache," Ranma said, waving a hand in symbolic dismissal of her concerns, Genma giving a nod and 'growf' of confirmation.

"Um... how do you...?" Kasumi began to ask, curiosity managing to push back her politeness just this once, leaning over in her interest.

"We hiked back from Jusenkyo, living off of our wits and out of our pockets. Of course the old man tried to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear by seeing if his curse would let him eat bamboo," Ranma replied, before nonchalantly chowing down on his rice, Kasumi's attention keeping his manners in display, with rice flying only into his mouth.

Genma visibly shuddered, letting out a plaintive sounding growl, before tucking into Kasumi's food with an air of reverence, he too displaying manners that many who knew him would swear were never borne to begin with.

Appeased by Ranma's words, Kasumi demurely began eating her own meal, which was the unofficial signal for all that the meal had begun, and the rather odd family unit enjoyed a quiet, peaceful breakfast.

Once the food was all eaten, the three teens set off - the Tendos on foot, Ranma on the fence-line. As they walked along at a leisurely yet brisk pace, Akane couldn't resist glancing at Ranma. "What, you too good to walk down here with us?" she asked, half snidely, half legitimately curious. At this point there was no real heat behind her dislike of Ranma, and Nabiki could tell the sneer was more out of form's sake from her youngest, and most stubborn, sibling.

"Huh?" Ranma responded, casting her an genuinely bamboozled look - and yet he still seemed to keep his balance without even trying, jogging along at the same pace on a narrow pipe as most would walk solid ground.

"I think she's asking what you're doing up on the fence. We don't have cooties you know," Nabiki explained archly, mildly curious herself.

"Oh! Sorry, Nabiki, it's sort of instinct at this point," Ranma replied, leaping down from the fence without missing his stride, to the approving nods of both Tendo sisters. "Midair combat is my school's specialty, so I've been training to balance all my life. I learned to climb probably before I learned to walk. Going high's just kind of second nature to me by now."

Akane blinked, torn between her interest at this insight into Ranma's life and annoyance that he was addressing Nabiki when she'd been the one asking the question in the first place. Nabiki simply smiled and nodded. "It's nothing, Ranma. Thank you for explaining." Akane shrugged to herself and let the matter go, so the three continued on their way to school in amicable silence

Within minutes, the trio were coming through the gates into Furinkan High School. As Akane expected, the usual crowd of idiot boys were there, waiting for their beating, and she charged straight into their ranks, ready to punch the first of them in the face.

But... none of them moved. They all held their ground, and Akane found herself skidding to a stop, feeling quite confused at the lack of imminent violence. "What's going on?!" she demanded of them, ready to punch them if they didn't explain. The 'logic' of punching them out for not trying to punch her was lost on Akane

The boys didn't respond, instead shuffling about nervously and refusing to meet her gaze. Then, as one they stepped aside, allowing for one of their own to step forth; a bombastic figure in blue uwagi and black hakama, carrying a bokken at the ready, whose presence made Akane groan with visible dismay, face falling in an expression of exhaustion. "What is it, Kuno?" she sighed, despair filling her voice and body language at what dreaded leavings of mental decay was collected into what Kuno considered a 'good idea'.

"Forgive me, my tigress, but I will be unable to spar with you this morn. For I must save my strength to deal with a most base and lowly scoundrel, a rascal whom laid me low in front of my peers through the use of deceit and has shattered their faith in my prowess by making me appear too weak to continue being their shining light," Kuno declared, striking up a pose straight out of a shonen manga complete with breeze blown hair. He was oblivious to the incredulous looks of the boys surrounding him, and the susurrus of comments as to the inaccuracy of his words.

"Hey! I beat you fair and square, you lying jerk!" Ranma shouted angrily from the gate, Nabiki raising an eyebrow in mild curiosity at Kuno's actions. This was unusual behavior for the bombastically boisterous buffon, and she was intrigued to see where it went and how she could profit from it

Kuno's head snapped up to glare fiercely at the newest attendee of Furinkan High. "Lo and behold! Speak of the devil and he doth appear; thou base scoundrel, today, we shall see you punished for your misdeeds!" He declared, leveling his bokken at Ranma who looked about as impressed by the 'threat' as an ocean is by a drop of water.

' _Pft. Another school bully who thinks he's so great. Gonna stomp him into... wait a minute...'_ Ranma glanced at Nabiki's calculating look towards Kuno. ' _Hmm...maybe I can do something nice for Nabiki...'_

So, Ranma simply folded his arms across his chest and sneered at Kuno. "Why should I fight you? I already kicked your ass yesterday in front of everyone." He added in a cocky smirk for good measure, having pegged Kuno as the easily riled type

"Vile slander, villain!" Kuno shouted incesed, making Ranma's smirk widen with smug satisfaction. "Have you no honor? Will you refuse my invitation of challenge?"

Nabiki blinked. She could have sworn the air suddenly felt warmer standing next to Ranma... and she could easily see the way he tensed at Kuno's words, the quiet crackle of knuckles being clenched overly tight echoing in her ears. Obviously, Kuno had touched a nerve...

"Fine... you want to call it a challenge? Then we'll make it a formal challenge," Ranma declared in a tight voice that matched his coiled muscles perfectly. "And that means we're going to need some stakes for the winner."

"You slander me, and then speak of prizes? Reduce our noble conflict to a tawdry brawl for profit? Truly, thou art a good mate for Nabiki Tendo!" Kuno spat, earning himself yet another price mark up in Nabiki's books.

Rage kept the blush from Ranma's cheeks. "You want a rematch? Fine, but we'll do it on **my** terms. I could just walk away..."

"Base lowborn knave! ...Fine. What are your terms?" Kuno conceded, glowering at Ranma, not liking the situation but being in too deep to pull out now.

"When I win-" Ranma began to say.

"You mean _if_ you win," Kuno interjected with a job of his bokken.

" **When** I win," Ranma reiterated, ignoring Kuno's indignation in his own ire, "You're going to call off this stupid morning brawl session."

The Tendo sisters - and the boys who made up the Hentai Horde, but who really cared about their opinion? - were shocked, staring at Ranma in surprise. Now Ranma was blushing - just a little, as he'd carefully clarify to anyone who asked. But Kuno rallied first, jabbing his bokken at the new student with righteous indignation.

"Swine! Have you tired of your base mistress's tawdry affections already? Now you would seek to claim the fair Akane Tendo for yourself?! I, Tatewaki Kuno, will never permit it!" he bellowed, the wooden practice tool in hand positively vibrating in outrage at the idea of a rival that he couldn't just push around in the pursuit of Akane.

"Oh get over yourself!" Ranma snapped immediately. "I don't want nothing to do with that tomboy!"

"Hey!" Akane squawked, not sure if she should feel more indignant or annoyed...so she settled for indignantly annoyed in a masterful display of multitasking that had Nabiki absentmindedly poking her sister's side to hush her up. Akane acquiesced with ill-grace and sulked as the pair watching for further developments.

"But just because I don't want her doesn't mean that I think she deserves what you're doing to her! I mean, come on; you guys try to beat the snot out of her every morning? No wonder she's so grumpy!" Ranma continued in a more moderate tone of voice, seemingly oblivious of said person's irritation rising almost exponentially.

"I'm standing right here, jerk!" Akane protested, the annoyed part of her getting more huffy when nobody seemed to care, too focused on the imminent fight. She settled down with a grumble at another, more forceful, jab from her sister.

"So, yeah, you want this rematch? Fine. But if I win, then you're cancelling this stupid best her to date her nonsense," Ranma concluded, with a level look at the upperclassman.

"Hmph! It is clear you lack the wits to see the truth purpose behind our morning sessions... but very well. It is a bargain. And should I win..." Kuno trailed off, then scratched his chin as he thought it out. Come to think of it, what **did** he want from Ranma? He was blind enough to not see the beauty of Akane Tendo, so it wasn't like there was any point in ordering him to stay away from her. Extract something from Nabiki through Ranma? Pfeh, there was no way **that** would work, trying to extract concessions from her 'emotional entanglements' was akin to trying to squeeze blood from a stone. Order him to acknowledge Kuno's obvious superiority in front of their classmates? No, not good enough... ah-hah!

"Well then, Ranma Saotome; should I win, then you are to publicly acknowledge me as your superior," Kuno declared with aplomb, as if making a decree of the Sun Throne itself, not noticing the rolled eyes of the many onlookers that were unsurprised with Kuno's condition.

"Fine, it's a deal, now-" Ranma replied promptly, not really seeing the big deal, even if he lost (which he wouldn't) he could get a rematch and demand the same thing..

"And," Kuno added, continuing over the top of his new enemy's words, "You will register yourself as a formal member of the Furinkan High Kendo team!"

The resounding "...What?!" from all present practically shook the trees.

Kuno smirked and nonchalantly leaned his bokken against his shoulder. "It is clear that you have some small talent for the martial arts, even if you do disgrace yourself with the morals of a backstreet brawler. As the captain of Furinkan High's Kendo team, I would be remiss in my duties if I did not secure those skills of yours for my squad, before you fell in with such riffraff as the wrestling, karate or sumo teams," he explained bombastically, as if the offer itself was a favor beyond Ranma's merit.

The various members of those clubs, openly glared at Kuno, and other members of other clubs looked thoughtful. Now that they thought about it... if Ranma really was anywhere near good as the gossip said, then he'd be a prize score for any of the school's combat or sports clubs!

"I don't intend to join any of 'em," Ranma bluntly drawled. "But if those are yer terms...? Then fine, it's a deal."

"Very well then!" Kuno declared, shifting instantly into a kendo attack stance. "We begin!" he shouted, and sprinted towards Ranma

"No! Wait, you idiot!" Ranma shouted, throwing up a hand in a classic "stop" sign, with Kuno instinctively screeching to a halt. "We don't have time to battle right now!" Ranma pointed out, his words underscored as the first of the "get to class" bells began sounding from Furinkan's clock tower. "We'll fight this match after school, when we can give it our all, understand?"

"You are a base and cowardly cur... but, in this, I suppose you are correct," Kuno grudgingly conceded, magnanimously ignoring a wave and look from Ranma that plainly stated 'why thank you _so_ much pal'. "But know this; you can only delay the inevitable, not change it!" He declared, pointing his wooden sword at Ranma for emphasis, before turning and striding away.

The rest of the Hentai Horde quickly broke up and filed inwards, murmuring to each other as they went; it was a novel experience to have not missed at least some part of class due to being injured. The denizens of the Tendo Dojo followed in their heels, the two Tendo sisters eyeing Ranma curiously, who was doing his best to not look at either of them.

* * *

Come lunchtime...

* * *

As soon as the first break of the day was announced, Akane wasted no time in sweeping over to Ranma's desk. "Alright, what's the big idea?" she demanded, positively _slamming_ her hands on his desk in the hope of startling him into being off-guard.

Ranma just looked back at her coolly, earning a pout from Akane. "I need a reason?"

"Most people don't go picking fights with guys as skilled as Kuno for 'no reason', Ranma," she dryly responded, much as she was **loathe** to admit, Kuno had enough skill for the statement to be true.

"I'm not 'most people'. But it's just like I told the stick-for-brains; I don't like you any more than you like me, but that doesn't mean I think it's right what he's got you doing... or are you saying that you enjoy having to beat up all those morons every morning?" Ranma asked wryly with a raised brow for added emphasis.

"You kidding? I'll be glad to have things go back to normal!" Akane replied firmly. She looked at Ranma, silently studying him, but ultimately conceded defeat; either he had a poker face to match her sister's, or he was telling the truth. "I guess... maybe you're not such a jerk after all," she admitted, thinking back over that scene at the front gates and replaying it in her head. Then she stopped as a memory stood out, and she gave Ranma a knowing smirk. "But then, you're not entirely doing this to be my knight in shining armor, are you?"

"What?" Ranma asked, dumbfounded, his eyes shifting around as if looking for where that observation came from.

"You're doing this to impress my sister, aren't you?" Akane elaborated as she crossed her arms in confidence, still smirking. Ranma visibly tensed up at that, eyes going wide, and she knew that she'd hit the nail on the head.

"You really do like her, don't you?" She asked, almost in wonder.

"S-so what if I do? Our dads engaged us, remember? I figured trying to be nice with her was the least I could do," Ranma replied defensively, refusing to look Akane in the eye.

Akane simply laughed softly to herself; so, the scarily skilled stranger had a soft spot for her sister? That actually made him a little less intimidating than he had been... he was still a jerk, as that morning had shown, but... maybe she didn't need to be so fired up about his presence. Besides, being so mad all the time was getting really old, really fast.

And so, with that logic in mind, she turned and left Ranma to his thoughts. She just hoped he could actually win this fight now... yes, he'd taken Kuno down so effortlessly yesterday, but that could just have been a fluke...

* * *

Meanwhile, in Homeroom 2-E ...

* * *

Nabiki had arrived too late for her henchwomen to grill her like they had hoped. But the second the lunch-bell gave them the chance, they were on their leader like a pair of starving hounds, their gossip-hunting instincts mercilessly indiscriminate of whom they preyed on in their pursuit of news.

"Alright, Nabiki, spill it! What's the story with you and that Ranma kid?" Kikuko asked, grinning excitedly, brows waggling.

"Yeah; are you really engaged?" Ryonami added, looking at her inquisitively.

"Steady there, ladies; remember what I always told you about pressing your peers for information - being too blunt makes them skittish." Nabiki scolded them, earning a contrite bow from both. "But... yes, what my little sister ever so tactfully blurted out is true. Our fathers arranged it for us to marry."

"How old fashioned," Ryonami mused, slightly nonplussed that was even an option in this day and age.

"Yeah, but isn't it also romantic? Two souls bound together by the whims of fate, childhood crushes finally united..." Kikuko sighed longingly, brushing a hand absently through her long, orange-tinted curls, sparkles seeming to dance around her eyes as she presumably imagined some lovey-dovey scenes.

It never ceased to amaze Nabiki how somebody better known for being one of the school's math geeks could be such a cheesy romantic... but then, most math geeks didn't have quite the same feminine charms that Kikuko tried so strongly to downplay out of shyness. "I hate to burst your bubble, Kikuko, but it was nothing like that. I'd never even heard his name before he and his father showed up at our house the evening before last," she patiently explained, while still focusing her needles of reality for maximum bubble popping.

Both of her partners-in-profit stared at her, visibly dumbfounded. "But... that's so dumb!" Ryonami protested, her eye twitching at how much worse it was than she'd originally thought.

Nabiki shrugged. "I never claimed our fathers were brain surgeons." ' _Especially not Ranma's; there's still something fishy going on with that one...'_ She privately noted to herself.

Kikuko wilted, before rallying a bit. "Oh... well, uh, I guess he seems nice?" she responded with a meek smile.

"We're still getting to know each other," Nabiki told her. Then, after letting her sweat a moment, she smiled and added, "But, yes, he does seem to be a nice guy... and if all goes well, he's going to make us a nice bit of extra pocket money this afternoon..."

* * *

Once school ended...

* * *

Naturally, with a whole school day to percolate, the story of Ranma and Kuno's arranged duel was flying throughout Furinkan High School - it'd even managed to drown out the rumors and gossip over Ranma and Nabiki's engagement, a small marvel considering the way gossip would linger in the school.

Kuno was not precisely the most liked student at Furinkan High - truth be told, even most of his Kendo teammates couldn't stand him - but he had earned the grudging respect that comes from being the most feared fighter on campus.

The year before, the other self-proclaimed strongmen and martial artists of Furinkan High had all taken their shots at dethroning Kuno, but he had triumphed over them all with pompous proclamations and showboating after each victory. That was partially how the Hentai Horde had come to be in the first place.

So the mysterious new kid, who rumor had it had already managed to floor Kuno with two blows, declaring he'd take Kuno on in a formal fight? Well, there wasn't a kid in Furinkan who wanted to miss _that_ match!

So it was that one of the more out-of-the-way sports fields had been commandeered as a makeshift arena - nobody wanted any dull adults spoiling things after all - and it was now thronged with students, milling about and waiting excitedly for the duel to begin, Ranma and Kuno already having taken up positions at the center of the field.

Which of course meant that Nabiki, Kikuko and Ryonami were being run off their feet setting odds and taking bets on the outcome, much to Akane's chagrin.

"You're unbelievable, Nabiki - betting on your own fiance's victory?" The youngest Tendo complained, unable to decide if she was legitimately surprised...or surprised that she was surprised at all...it was giving Akane a headache.

"Hey, it's not like he minds - right, Ranma?" Nabiki chirped, flashing a winsome grin at her fiance as she counted yen notes with a cheerful hum and a glint in her eye

"A bit of extra pocket money is always welcome in my books," Ranma chuckled; as he'd told Nabiki the previous afternoon, this sort of prize fighting wasn't something he was unfamiliar with. Yes, he'd had to run more than one hustle himself in his trek across Japan and China... especially on those occasions when Genma had decided to gamble, because he tended to wind up losing.

"And who says that you're going to see one red yen of that money?" Akane pointed out, rather factually considering her sister's stingy ways.

"How could you think so little of me?" Nabiki replied, affecting a wounded mien that only got a flat look in response from Akane. Giving her younger sister a maturely stuck out tongue, Nabiki got to the point, adding "Of course Ranma will be getting a cut of the profits - 10% of it, in fact," she clarified, smirking at her 'magnanimity'.

"Gee, how generous of you," Akane drawled dryly, rolling her eyes for good measure.

"I'll say - I'm doing the dangerous part! I should get at least 50%!" Ranma chimed in, giving his fiance an askance look; even his pops wasn't that gougey when it came to money. Looks like he was going to have to stay on his toes with his fiancee when it came to money

"But I'm handling all the business affairs - plus, I need to pay Kikuko and Ryonami their share, too," Nabiki pointed out, her grin getting hungrier at the prospect of a good haggling session. She was curious how well Ranma would last before she inevitably swept the field

"Do you intend to keep me waiting forever, you honorless cur?!" Kuno's voice rang out suddenly startling the trio out of their own little world. The upperclassman had done his best to be patient, but had swiftly reached his limits for being ignored by his enemy, his 'love' and the woman he hated as much as he 'needed' her.

Ranma scowled at Kuno's rude interruption, then turned his attention back to Nabiki long enough to say to her, "We'll talk about this after I'm done," before facing his opponent again. Nabiki's smirk was full of anticipation for the event, she was definitely not going to let Ranma off easy just because their parents matched them up. He wanted that money, he'd have to prove he deserved it.

With deliberate, precise motions, Ranma loudly cracked his neck and popped his knuckles, visibly loosening up before adopting a fluid, hunkered down posture, with his arms held up before his chest in a position to strike or block. He waited for the Tendo sisters to scamper back to join the rest of the students before finally responding to Kuno. "Alright, big mouth; ready when you are."

"You have an insolent tongue, whelp! It shall be my pleasure to teach you some manners!" Kuno shouted, and then charged at Ranma. Despite his protestations in front of the gates that morning, he privately acknowledged the speed of his adversary - as deceitful as the blow that felled him had been, Ranma's ability to dodge attacks before that was well proven. He could not afford to take this ruffian lightly a second time! And so he struck with all the speed he could muster, slashing ferociously at the youth who had so insulted him.

Ranma was actually mildly impressed; this was a clear leap above the speed Kuno had been displaying the previous day! But it still wasn't enough to overwhelm him, and the onlookers watched with open mouths and gasps of shock and awe as Ranma seemed to flow around the blurring strikes of Kuno with the grace of a dancer.

"Okay, I'll admit it, he really is almost as good as he thinks he is," Akane murmured to her sister, what she was seeing dragging her backhanded compliment out of her.

Nabiki simply watched silently, feeling unusually tense. She was feeling something... weird. Worry, maybe? She couldn't really recall feeling it before. But she didn't like it, she knew that much. Though when Ranma suddenly lashed out and kicked Kuno in the face, sending the swordsman staggering backwards, she did feel a little better.

Kuno instinctively clasped his face, biting down a curse at the pain. "You dare..." He growled between his fingers, before shrugging off the pain of his bruised face to clasp his sword again. "I strike!" he roared, and began jabbing at Ranma with all his might. To his increasing fury, Ranma still dodged even his most fervent thrusting attacks, flipping nimbly from leg to leg and even arm to arm in order to dodge Kuno's strikes.

But just because Ranma could dodge them, that didn't mean others were so fortunate. The students unfortunate enough to be sitting on the sidelines behind Ranma suddenly began to yelp and howl, feeling stinging impacts slapping against their limbs, torsos, even faces.

"Hey, what gives? Ow! That hurts!" hollered one student, trying to shield his face with his arms.

"It's gotta be the air pressure - he's trying to stab Saotome so hard the thrusts are hitting us all the way over here!" squealed another, curling into a ball to try and minimize the target she presented.

Their cries wrung a pang of guilt and anger from Ranma - getting bystanders mixed up in your fights was literally one of the worst things a martial artist could do, according to his father. Well, he'd been planning on playing this out, give Nabiki better odds to clean up with, so this just gave him an excuse to take that ploy in a whole new direction.

He wove his way towards Kuno, dodging each blow, until he was close enough to grab Kuno's wrist and use that to pull Kuno off balance. Ranma slugged Kuno in the gut - not hard enough to knock him out, like Ranma had the other day, but definitely hard enough to wind him. As Kuno gasped for air, Ranma released Kuno's wrist and sprang away.

"Alright, you're pretty fast, stick-boy - let's see how fast you really are! Catch me if you can!"

"What?!" Kuno wheezed out, his expression both pained and confused.

Ranma promptly stuck out his tongue and then sprang backwards again, casually clearing a distance that made Furinkan's long jump champion stare in dumbfounded wonder. With that single bound, the heir to the Saotome school of martial arts had made it almost to the slope where the students were sitting. Kuno snarled in fury and charged towards him, but Ranma simply sprang backwards again, leaping clearly over the students to apparent safety behind them.

Kuno sprang forward, actually managing to leap the students himself, but Ranma was already in motion again, bounding away like a human flea, leaping backwards away from the charging swordsman, who continued in hot pursuit. "Coward! Come back here, you scoundrel!"

The students watched, dumbfounded. This was not how they had expected the fight to go - although those who had been pelted with Kuno's air pressure bullets were grateful to at least be out of the line of fire.

Kikuko leaned over to her boss and long-time friend. "Um... Nabiki? Was that supposed to happen?"

If it were anyone else, Nabiki would have bluffed. But Kikuko was one of the very small handful of people to deserve Nabiki's honesty. "I have no idea what Ranma is doing," Nabiki admitted to Kikuko, keeping her expression even. If the marks saw her put off, they'd be sure to take advantage.

"Hey - I want to change my bet to Kuno!" one of the students nearby suddenly spoke up.

"Yeah, me too!" chorused several others.

And the next thing that Nabiki and her partners knew, they were swarmed with students who wanted to change their bets. Originally, there had been a fairly even split between those betting on Kuno and those betting on Ranma; now, Kuno was becoming the hot favorite to win. Which was good news for Nabiki's profit margin, if Ranma could win...Nabiki grinned mentally; she had a feeling things were going their way.

Unaware of what was happening back at the field, Ranma continued leading Kuno onwards across the grounds of Furinkan High. Racing and leaping backwards, guided only by the occasional brief glance and one's peripheral vision, was a tough skill to master, but it was one that Ranma had sought expertise in. As such, he was quite confident in his flight - and certain of the outrage he was engineering in his adversary.

"Come on, Kuno! If you can't catch me, then I win!" Ranma jeered, practicing another staple of Genma's school of Anything Goes: Cheesing your opponent off so much they have an apoplexy, so then you can win by default.

"Suh-puff! -Silence, wretch!" Kuno snarled viciously, thrusting his bokken in an effort to catch Ranma with an air pressure bullet, a lucky stab...anything to get the obnoxious little peasant to **stand still** and be pummeled!

The gust of wind simply whistled harmlessly through Ranma's legs as the infuriating martial artist sprang over it in another mighty backwards leap. "Need to do better than that!" He mocked Kuno... and then he screamed in horror as he glanced down and saw that what he was sailing over was not trusty earth and concrete, but the treacherous crystal-blue glint of water! "Nobody told me they had a pool here!" He howled, flailing his arms to try and arrest his descent... but to no avail, as he hit the water with a mighty splash and felt the cool liquid envelop him in its fluid embrace.

Kuno was too mad to wonder about his foe's strange outburst of panic, instead racing over to the pool's edge. "You won't escape me that way! A true samurai is a master swimmer!" he bragged completely disregarding that swimming had nothing to do with bushido, right before he dived into the water - oblivious as he did so to the sound of students racing to catch up to him and Ranma.

At the bottom of the pool, Ranma kicked off her now too-large shoes and started to frog-stroke to the other end of the pool. "Gotta get outta here... I gotta get outta here!" she gurgled to herself.

"Saotome!" Kuno gurgled... well, it would have been a snarl, had he not had a mouth full of pool water. Kicking madly, he managed to catch up to Ranma and lashed out with his hand, grabbing hold of his foe's pigtail to stop Ranma's flight.

Ranma let out a burble of mixed pain and displeasure as Kuno's fingers tugged at her scalp. "Gerroff!" she bubbled, trying to drive him back with kicks or elbows. Unfortunately, whilst midair combat was the Saotome School's speciality, the same could not be said of underwater combat, and her blows were robbed of a vital amount of power. Kuno instead hauled Ranma close, grappling with her as he tried to take her firmly in his arms and wrestle her into submission - which was when one of his hands wrapped itself around a newly formed breast and squeezed it hard.

Ranma's eyes widened as the pain from being manhandled ripped through her awareness - only to be dulled by the upswelling of rage and shame that roared up from deep within the core of her being. She gritted her teeth and snarled, despite the water that flooded her mouth; "Why you... pervert!" She burbled, unconsciously echoing a cry that in a different world would become commonplace

Twisting like an eel, she wrapped an arm around Kuno's neck, holding him fast in a headlock whilst deliberately tilting her center of gravity against Kuno, with as much speed as she could. She dropped down until she hit the bottom of the pool, sinking to her knees as she built up power in finely honed thighs... and then, with the solid floor of the pool for leverage, she leapt upwards with all of her might.

By this point in time, the students had gathered around the pool, pointing at the distorted shapes clearly grappling in its depths and chattering to each other excitedly. Gasps of awe and wonder filled the air as the combatants seemed to explode out the air, a pillar of water rising several times a man's height as Ranma and Kuno hurtled from the depths and over a storey into the air, simultaneously leaping all the way to the other end of the pool.

In a blur that they could only barely follow, the red-clad form of Ranma Saotome swung Kuno around and down, slamming him onto the side of the pool with such force that the concrete buckled beneath him. And that still wasn't enough, because Ranma didn't release his grip, instead holding Kuno by the head and suspending himself aloft by his hands.

What the students couldn't see from their vantage point was that this left the stunned, barely conscious Kuno staring Ranma right in the eyes. Dazed as he was, he could hardly form a coherent picture - but he wasn't so battered that he was blind to some very key differences... especially two large torso-height ones. "A...girl?" he gasped out, his eyes starting to focus.

Ranma's eyes practically glowed with fury, and she twisted around with a contortionist's flexibility, delivering a powerful two-footed stomp right into Kuno's face. Kuno's nose broke with an audible crunch, the wave of pain pushing him past his limits and sending him tumbling into blackness, even as Ranma used her opponent's face as a springboard to leap forward again, clearing the fence around the pool and vanishing into the trees beyond.

"Oooh, that looked like it hurt!" One of the students noted, many of the others wincing or muttering their agreement. The empathy was muted however, as plenty of the spectators had wanted to do that to Kuno for a long, _long_ time.

"Looks like Kuno's out cold!"

"Can you blame him after a blow like that? That Saotome's a beast!"

"Where'd he jump off to, anyway?"

"Who knows?"

"Hey, was it me, or did Saotome look different?"

"How could you tell? They were going so fast, I mostly just saw blurs!"

As the oblivious student body chattered, the Tendo sisters shared a knowing look. They knew why Ranma had run off at this moment... but, as the first of the gamblers came over to collect their winnings or, in much greater numbers, to hand over their losses, they couldn't go after her immediately.

Eventually, though, the students had separated, with some reluctantly dragging Kuno off to the school infirmary, and Nabiki was able to go after her missing fiance, with Akane tagging along for reasons that escaped Nabiki. Remembering Ranma's stunt from the previous afternoon, Nabiki led Akane into the trees, and soon enough, they found a now-damp rather than sodden redhead sitting sullenly in the fork of a tree.

"What's wrong, Ranma? Got too concerned with showing off to watch where you were going?" Akane called up, enjoying this opportunity to feel a little superior to Ranma - yes, she was calling it a formal truce now, but that didn't mean it wasn't nice to feel better than him in at least some way.

"Pfeh. At least I finished my fight for real," Ranma scoffed back.

"I'll say you did. They're going to need to reset Kuno's nose after what you did to it," Nabiki noted. To her private surprise, Ranma actually winced at that.

"I didn't really have a choice - I needed to end it quick after I fell in that stupid pool," she replied sourly, grunting in irritation at the slip up that led her to falling in the pool.

"What was with all the jumping and running anyway? Why didn't you just clobber Kuno the way you did yesterday?" Akane asked. Though she was legitimately curious, she was also a touch riled up; the display from before had reminded Akane of her own match with Ranma and how infuriating it had been to have to chase an opponent who seemingly couldn't be hit.

"For the show, of course. I mean, I bet Nabiki won a lot more money when I made it look like Kuno actually had me on the ropes," Ranma elaborated, it wasn't like it was the first hustle Ranma had pulled.

"He's right; once they thought Kuno had the upper hand, almost everybody wanted to bet on him instead. We made a mint," Nabiki added, grinning wickedly as she ruffled a bundle of yen notes, all but purring at the beautiful sound of money being shuffled.

"Pft. You two were made for each other," Akane scoffed sourly; she liked spending money herself, but really, the pair seemed to thrive on skinning other people's wallets.

"You say that like it's a bad thing," Nabiki quipped, getting a nod and shrug of agreement from Ranma.

"Now, why don't you come down here like a civilized person, hmm? We'll change you back and talk about your share of the profits," she told Ranma, holding up a still-steaming kettle of freshly boiled water.

"Sounds good to me," Ranma said, visibly perking up at the prospect of a return to her true gender. She slipped from the tree as easily as somebody stepping off of their back patio, with both Tendos doing their best to ignore the way her damp silk shirt clung to her bosom, and what the sudden impact of landing on the ground did to her free-floating breasts.

Once Ranma was back to normal - for the moment, at least - the triad split up. Akane took the kettle and returned it to the school grounds, while Ranma and Nabiki went off to enjoy their winnings whilst arguing happily about Ranma's share of the take.

Ultimately, though, their path brought them back home. "We're home!" They called out as they stepped into the house proper from the genkan.

"Welcome home, you two. You have a visitor," Kasumi called back, making them stop and blink in surprise.

"I wasn't expecting nobody - were you?" Ranma asked Nabiki, who shook her head.

Puzzled, they made their way to the dining room, where they both stopped in horror at the sight of Tatewaki Kuno, face bound in bandages, sitting formally at their dining room table.

"Saotome. Tendo." He declared with icy formality, eyes cold and steely as he stared at them accusingly. "I know the truth."

* * *

Chapter End & Closing Notes

* * *

And that's our chapter's end - and our first cliffhanger! If I'm going to try and get two of these out per month, I may have to start doing this more frequently, and I'm sorry about that.

All the same, I do hope that you're enjoying this story, and looking forward to seeing where we go from here. Because here is where the divergences _really_ start to build up...

From what I've heard, Nabiki's two henchwomen, who I think first appeared as random schoolgirls in Nabiki's class in the 2nd episode and were first shown acting as henchwomen in the 8th episode, "School is a Battlefield! Ranma vs. Ryoga". I've heard that their official names are Kikuko (the orange-haired girl) and Ryonami (the girl with the light brown hair in a pageboy cut), but I don't know where the sources of these names are, so if anyone can find proof of that, I'd really appreciate it!

Now, Nabiki is, in canon, the Tendo sister most open to sex, and she has some of the more notorious "bi-curious" hints. Since this story is running with the precept that Nabiki is our central female protagonist and romantic lead, naturally, that side's coming a little more to the fore, but I do hope folks don't think it's being overdone.

Now that I'm starting to get back into the swing of writing for Ranma 1/2 again, I'm considering some other projects as well. I have a Ranma/D&D crossover planned that will be using the "Nabiki as Ranma's fiancee" arc from the anime as its pivoting point, and whilst I can't be certain of when it will debut, I hope folks will enjoy it.


	4. Storm Clouds Gathering!

Author's Notes:

Okay, firstly, I'm sorry about the long delay, guys. Real life has just come down on both myself and my editor like a ton of bricks, and we've been swamped, so this took way longer than we wanted to get it out.

I want to thank you all for the kindness and warm welcome you've shown me with this project; it started as a mere idle thought, but I'm glad that others are finding it as convincing a basic concept as I did.

Pesterfield: To answer your question (I debated on if I should PM you or if this would be of interest to other readers), there's a number of incidents that people like to use as "evidence" for Nabiki being at least bisexual, or not a lesbian. Firstly, there's her initial reaction of calling Ranma-chan "cute" when s/he first arrives - followed by her repeatedly groping Ranma's bosom. Then there's the deal with Nabiki taking raunchy photos of Ranma-chan to sell and keeping them in her room until she sells them (though I feel that point's reaching). Then there's her brief conversation that Ranma overhears after he returns from his first fight with Kuno; the manga is mildly suggestive, with her dialogue being "what's wrong with a boy who can turn into a girl?", but the anime is more so, changing the dialogue to "I think it's cool he can change into a girl". There's also a sequence that I'm pretty sure is anime-exclusive in... I think it's the Japanese Nanniichuan arc, where Nabiki directly asks Akane if she's certain she wants to cure Ranma, adding - to paraphrase - an observation that Ranma's curse will make the honeymoon a lot more interesting. There might be others, but those are the ones I recall off the top of my head.

* * *

 _ **Chapter 4: Storm Clouds Gathering!**_

* * *

You could have cut the air in the Tendo living room with a knife as the three teens stared each other down. Kuno's fateful words seemed to echo in their minds, Ranma slowly clenching his fists in anticipation of a fight as Nabiki switched into damage control mode. "The truth, Kuno baby? Whatever do you mean by that?"

"Don't play games with me, Nabiki Tendo!" her classmate snapped back, a sneer of disdain marring his technically handsome features. "You and Saotome conspired to cheat against me in a sworn match of honor!" he declared, rising from his seat at the table and brandishing a condemnatory finger at the pair.

Nabiki felt a breath of relief that the 'truth' wasn't found out but Ranma found himself preoccupied responding to Kuno's accusation.

"I did no such thing!" Ranma barked in outrage, his pride as a martial artist not the only thing bristling at the insinuation that he was a coward.

"Pfah! Then what do you call running away and having somebody take your place, Saotome? You knew you stood no chance against my righteous blade, so you had that woman defeat me for you!" Kuno retorted hotly, his own outrage making his body rigid in its kneeling position.

"Like I said, I didn't do anything like that!" Ranma growled, fists clenching so tightly that his knuckles popped and crackled, making Nabiki glance at him with a hint of concern that he'd broken his own knuckles.

"Do you take me for a fool, Saotome? You may be utterly lacking in manhood, but it is only in the metaphorical sense; even I must confess you meet the physical requirements of the gender," Kuno scoffed, as Ranma snorted at the dig Kuno had snuck in the monologue. "But the ill-bred woman who defeated me - why, she was irrefutably a woman,"

Despite his scornful tone, Kuno's lips curved in a hint of a lecherous smile, his hands moving in gestures that the disgusted Ranma and disdainful (yet also slightly amused) Nabiki realized was a pantomime of someone groping a full female bosom. "Truly, the gods have a strange sense of humor, to create a creature so lovely and yet so lacking in the civilized graces - but stranger still is that you were fool enough to think your deception would not come out, Saotome!" Kuno then added, coming out of his lustful reverie to return to glowering at his underclassman.

"For the last time, nobody tricked anybody, Kuno. I beat you fair and square!" Ranma snapped , his furious gaze burning into Kuno's own ire-filled stare.

"Hast thou taken a heavy blow to the skull? Twas a woman who beat me, you cannot deny it!" Kuno shouted back, what little patience could _generously_ be attributed to him having long since been used up to Nabiki's gaze.

At those words, Ranma flinched, casting an uncertain gaze at Nabiki, who likewise found herself lost for what to do. Much as it appalled them to admit it... Kuno had a strangely legitimate point; without revealing the truth of Ranma's little Jusenkyo problem, he technically had been beaten by somebody other than Ranma.

The kendo practitioner smirked at the silence of his two arch-nemeses, misreading the cause of their hesitance as confirmation of their guilt. "I knew you could not squirm your way out of this. I shall formally announce the truth to my loyal men tomorrow morning; your base trickery shall not go unpunished!"

"You can't do that!" Nabiki protested, horrific visions of having to...to...to **refund** all that money dancing through her head and her hands went to protect her precious, aka, her wallet. "If I have to pay out winnings to the people who bet on you, I'll be bankrupt!"

"Tis fitting justice," Kuno scoffed mercilessly, years of money being spent for pictures of 'his fair tigress' fueling his ruthlessness.

Hearing her wallet crying out in panic, Nabiki looked to Ranma desperately. Normally, she had too much pride to use such hammy tactics like the Puppy Eyes of Pleading, but this time... well, extreme circumstances called for extreme measures! She bit her lip, eyes trembling as she wordlessly pleaded for Ranma to stop Kuno from doing what he was going to do.

Ranma bit his own lip uncertainly, glancing between Nabiki and Kuno as he tried to weigh up his desire to help his fiancee out with his desire to keep his curse hidden. For what felt like an age (but was really only a matter of seconds; Ranma definitely had a dramatic streak, one of the traits he shared with Genma), he wavered, torn by the dilemma, but ultimately he succumbed to the demands of his ego that he not let Kuno slander him as a cheat or a liar who'd "game" a fight in such a manner.

The fact Nabiki looked like she was about to start crying if her profits weren't saved wasn't that big of a factor. Really, it wasn't.

"Kuno... look, there's something I gotta tell ya," Ranma reluctantly stated, sighing softly in resignation.

"What do you possibly think you could say to me that would make me stay my hand?" Kuno huffed, his curiosity piqued despite the samurai wannabe's protest.

"The whole truth. I **was** the one who beat you... because that girl who kicked your teeth in? That was me," Ranma confessed with a full body cringe.

Silence reigned over the living room for a few minutes before Kuno responded. "...That has to be the most pathetic lie I have ever heard," he declared, sounding almost impressed at Ranma's temerity. "I mean, how stupid do you think I am, Saotome? I would have to have to fallen **under** a turnip truck to fall for something like that!"

"It's not a lie!" Ranma protested, despite a wince at the knowledge that if it wasn't his life, he'd have given the exact same reaction.

"Yeah, Kuno, he's telling the truth!" Akane said, making the other three teens start as her voice rang out from behind them.

"My tigress!" Kuno gasped in joy, neither noticing nor caring about the pained expression this brought to Akane's features.

"When did you get here?" Nabiki asked her little sister askance, too flustered by recent events to worry about putting on her normally cool facade.

"About when Kuno said what he was going to do tomorrow," the youngest Tendo replied casually, before focusing on the potential 'whistleblower'. "Anyway, that's not important! What matters is that Ranma is telling you the truth, Kuno."

At this, Kuno looked visibly uncomfortable, even through the bandages wreathing his face. "I... my love, I worship you and the ground that you walk upon, but you must understand, this is a claim I find rather hard to swallow..."

Ranma sighed again; he'd somewhat resigned himself to this when he'd decided on this course of action, but still, he couldn't help but hope. "Akane? Can ya please go boil a kettle? Actually, make it two or three... we're going to need to demonstrate..."

"Demonstrate what?" Kuno asked perplexedly, but received no answer to his question.

Instead, as Akane headed off to the kitchen, Ranma walked out into the garden, with the confused Kuno following in his wake, and Nabiki trailing along. They headed over to the garden hose, where Ranma took off his shirt.

"What are you up to, Saotome? I warn you, a base attack -" Kuno warned him, eyes narrowed in suspicion even as he prepared to defend against said attack.

"Ah, cram it, Kuno. You never heard the phrase 'seeing is believing'? Well, watch this..." He took the hose in one hand and turned it on to a low flow, cold water spraying out onto the grass. "This is just a normal garden hose, right?"

"Surprising as it may be to you, Saotome, I do know what is to be found in a garden," Kuno retorted dryly.

"And that makes this just ordinary water, yes?" Ranma added, feigning that he hadn't heard Kuno's mockery - although the twitch of his eye made it clear the barb had landed.

"I should hardly think it was liquid silver," Kuno snarked, almost passably by Nabiki's standards.

"Watch closely, then," Ranma replied, before raising the hose and letting the cold fluid wash over his bare skin, shivering instinctively at its touch and as he felt skin, fat, muscle and bone shift and twist into a new guise.

Nabiki couldn't help but smirk as Kuno visibly started back, his eyes bulging comically out of between his bandages. "The emperors have mercy upon us!" he blurted out at top volume.

Ranma turned off the hose and, now very obviously female, stared flatly at Kuno. "Do you recognize me now, Kuno?" Ranma said in her new guise as the 'uncouth female' with red hair.

"I... I scarce believe my eyes, but... all the kami preserve me, I do!" Kuno confessed, slowly and cautiously creeping forward, as if Ranma were a hannya ready to spring upon him and claw off his face. "Have I lost my wits? Where Ranma Saotome once stood, now stands the pigtailed girl from the pool this afternoon..."

And then, he boldly reached out and clasped Ranma's newly-bared breasts with both hands, squishing them firmly between his fingers. "My word, she even feels real!" Kuno marveled, a new lustful edge creeping into his voice as he continued his deviant 'test'.

Ranma's cheeks blazed red with equal parts mortification and fury. "Perverted jerk!" She screamed, before decking Kuno fair in the face with a mighty right hook that sent him flying backwards, nearly clipping Akane as she rounded the corner with two kettles full of hot water.

"Serves you right for running around bare-chested where a lech like Kuno could see," opined Akane, with a bit of an edge in her voice, walking casually past the prone form of her unwanted suitor. "Do you get off on letting people see your breasts, you pervert?"

Akane ran a critical eye over Ranma's lack of top attire, but it certainly wasn't in envy of the faux-female's larger bust, not at all. Just the impropriety of the situation... ' _Oh kami I'm turning into my sister,'_ Akane thought with horror.

"Ah, cram it, Akane. Can you think of a better way to make him realize this isn't a trick?" Ranma growled in embarrassment, her new bosom feeling more than a little tender under Kuno's less than gentle ministrations.

"You're unbelievable - there's really no denying you're a guy, is there?" Akane retorted almost wonderingly. "A real girl would die of shame before she did half the things you do."

"Which is half the reason why Ranma's better than a normal girl friend," Nabiki cheerfully interjected, deciding to take the heat off her gender bimorphic fiance. She furthered her comment by quipping, "Best parts of both worlds!", making Ranma blush again and hide his/her breasts behind an arm. "And best part he only takes up half the space and food that two people would; win/win," she concluded, smirking mischievously as she did.

"Ugh! Nabiki! You're almost as bad as he is!" Akane complained, a look of mild-betrayal spreading across her face at the lack of feminine support from the Tendo middle sibling.

"Saotome - explain yourself!" Kuno interjected, pushing past the Tendo sisters, looking no further the worse for wear than he already did. "What in the world is going on?"

"It's a long, long story," Ranma sighed morosely as she began to elaborate. "But the short form of it is that it's a curse I picked up during my training in China. Now, whenever I get splashed with cold water, I turn into a girl until I can get some hot water." And with that, she took one of the kettles from Akane and emptied it over her head, reverting back to male form before shaking his head as steam rose from his scalp.

"I... this is hard to swallow, Saotome," Kuno slowly said, looking so lost that even Akane felt a momentary surge of compassion for him. Nabiki felt no sympathy however, the putz had practically invaded their home, accused them of cheating, and worst of all! He'd threaten to take away _her profits_. In Nabiki's mind, Kuno could keep squirming a bit longer and she'd be quite happy to watch.

"Try living it. I've been doing my best to keep it under wraps, because I don't want to wind up being the school freak, you know?" Ranma replied, shaking his head to get some of the water out of his hair.

Kuno fell silent, visibly thinking it over (Nabiki uncharitably expected steam to be coming out his ears at so much of what she considered to be unusual mental effort from Kuno), and then growled irritably. "Curse you Saotome! Fine. My honor as a samurai will not permit me to reveal your secrets - it would be a cowardly act to so humiliate you. I will not stand in the way of the ending of Akane Tendo's morning challenges - but do not mistake this for peace between us! I shall train, and then I will avenge my defeats!" he warned Ranma, thrusting out an imperiously pointing finger at his first real rival, more excited by the prospect than he'd ever be willing to admit in public.

"Anytime you want a fight, Kuno, I'll be ready for it," Ranma retorted proudly, slinging his shirt back on over his shoulders. "But... I guess if you're willing to keep your mouth shut about me, then you're not so bad,"

Akane shot Ranma a disdainful look at his admission, which Ranma pointedly ignored. He wasn't going to have another situation shouted out to the entire school, and if this is what it took then he'd do it. Kuno, however, drew himself up proudly, politely excused himself, and then showed himself out.

"You know... I can't believe that actually worked," Nabiki commented to Ranma once Kuno was safely out of earshot.

"Well, he's not a total idiot, right? What else was he supposed to do when we gave him the bare facts?" Ranma replied.

"At least it only took one transformation to get through to him... thanks for the water, Akane," he added - admittedly, as something of an afterthought.

"Eh, I suppose it was the least I could do for you getting Kuno and his idiots off of my back," Akane conceded. She tried to sound nonchalant, but despite how Ranma annoyed her, she was still actually pretty happy with how this had all turned out. No more crazy morning fights! Things could actually get back to normal!

She would look back on her optimistic thought years later and sigh at how utterly naive she had been back then.

* * *

That evening, after dinner...

* * *

As steam gently swirled around the bathroom, Ranma sighed softly in contentment, water splashing gently as he shifted in the tub. Even if living at the Tendo Dojo had absolutely nothing else going for it - and that wasn't the case! - the fact he had access to hot baths whenever he wanted would have sold him. Even before the curse had made them a vital key to maintaining his sanity, he'd always reveled in the oft-infrequent opportunity to just dip himself into a full tub of steamy hot water and let the heat soak into his bones after years on the road and washing in rivers, pools, or just heavy enough rain. Nothing could ruin this moment for him..

Which of course was when the door slid open. Ranma's gaze immediately shifted to the door, already instinctively readying himself to complain if his father thought he was going to just get into the tub as a panda - only for the words to die in his throat at who he saw standing there.

Since the first moment they had met at the inner hall of the Tendo house, Ranma had thought Nabiki was cute. Admittedly, he didn't have a lot of experience with girls, but he knew what he liked, and Nabiki? She was the cutest girl he'd seen since that one unfortunate incident in China. So, understandably, the image of a naked Nabiki, modesty just barely preserved by a towel she was holding by one hand above her breast as it draped loosely down her torso, utterly failing to hide the curve of her hips, the fullness of her chest, or the abundance of creamy smooth skin, was burned into his brain... until he realized what he was doing and he hurriedly averted his gaze, covering his eyes with his hand for added measure.

"Gah! Nabiki, I'm sorry!" he yelped instinctively, whilst he didn't have much experience with women, he knew that blatantly staring counted as a big no-no in most cases.

"Why? I was the one who walked in on you," she replied casually. To Ranma's surprise, she didn't sound angry or upset, as had been the case in those mercifully few other times when circumstances had led him to see women in considerably less than full dress.

"It would have helped if you'd put the occupied sign up, you know," she added, her tone still light and playfully teasing. "Can't blame a girl for getting ready when she think she's alone."

It actually took Ranma a few moments to work out what she was talking about, and then he finally remembered seeing a cute little door sign in the clothing section of the bathroom. "Oh... right, sorry. It's... taking a little longer to get used to civilization again than I thought. I'll remember it next time," he promised her, grateful that he wasn't in hot water...figuratively speaking of course.

"Probably a good idea if you do. Akane would have hit the roof if she'd walked in on you," Nabiki quipped, albeit with a look in her eyes warning Ranma to take the advice to heart. Last thing the house budget needed was repair bills. "...Will you look at me already? I'm not going to bite," she assured him - she actually giggled at the comment, making Ranma blush gently.

Hesitantly, Ranma uncovered his eyes and turned his face back to her - pointedly looking above the neckline as he did. "I'm really sorry about this, Nabiki," he repeated again, really wanting to make sure they were alright. He didn't want to mess this up.

"Oh, it's alright, Ranma. No harm done. After all, nothing you haven't seen before, right?" she replied, grinning that impish grin of hers that made Ranma's heart skip a beat. "Besides, after the shows I've gotten so far, a little **tit** -for- **tat** is only fair," she added, still grinning.

She winked at him as she gave a little wave goodbye and then turned around to step back out through the door... giving Ranma a perfect look at her shapely bare back and perky buttocks in the process. She swished her hips in a way that just had to be deliberate, making it perfectly clear she expected him to be watching, and then slid the door closed.

"Don't take too long, please? I like a nice hot bath myself," she called back through the closed door.

"O-okay, Nabiki..." Ranma responded, slinking down deeper into the water and hugging his knees. Funny, he'd just been enjoying the heat... now he wished the water was colder. A **lot** colder.

In the entrance room, Nabiki smirked to herself... though an astute observer would have realized that she too had a dusting of crimson on her cheeks. She'd always been the most sexually confident of the Tendo sisters, and using her charms to aid her schemes was nothing new to her, but that? Well, that had been a whole new experience for her.

...Not that she hadn't enjoyed it. Handsome, sweet, and so easy to tease? Mmm, yes, she really did need to thank daddy for this engagement some time in the near future...

* * *

The next morning...

* * *

Yet another morning's rest that had broken too early for Nabiki's liking saw the middle Tendo daughter glowering across the table at the man who would call himself her father-in-law. "So, incidentally, how long do you expect to stay a guest at our home, Mr. Saotome?" she asked, her irritation shining through in the iciness of her tone even as a mug of nectar (coffee to anyone else) warmed her hand.

"Why, I am going to be living here, of course!" The almost literal bear of a man responded, scarfing down his rice with a complete lack of shame or waste, she had to admit, his gluttony not letting a single grain escape his rapacious appetite. "Where else would a father live but with his son and daughter-in-law?"

"I would have presumed in his own home," Nabiki replied, sweet as poisoned honey, her eyes never leaving the subject of her interrogation.

"We don't got one," Ranma promptly interjected, munching on his own rice just as eagerly if less voraciously than his father.

Nabiki's head whipped around to face him, the implications of that simple statement and the conversational tone her fiance spoke it in stirring up old and painful memories of her own. Impulsively, she reached out and gently brushed his hand with her own, so distracted that she missed the puzzled look that Soun directed at Genma, and the shifty look the elder Saotome developed in turn. It wasn't until the elder Saotome spoke up that Nabiki redirected her attention back his way.

"Yes, as my son said, the open road has been our only home for quite some time. So of course I will be remaining here, as your father knew," Genma declared pompously, before turning back to breakfast to signify an end to the topic.

For a brief moment, Soun looked like he wanted to say something about that, but a quick shared glance between the old friends and he held his tongue. They would speak of it, but in private.

"That's all well and good... but have you given any thought to room and board?" Nabiki bluntly asked him, not having been distracted from her original conversational current, despite the show and tell just arrayed.

"Nabiki!" Soun scolded her, trying to give a stern look to his middle child to curb her impropriety. Sadly, it failed utterly.

"I'm sorry, daddy, but we are going to need to feed six people now, if that's the case; your council wages only stretch so far," Nabiki reminded him politely, but without yielding any ground. The whole family knew that Nabiki had a better head for keeping the book-keeping straight, so she occasionally would lend her father a hand when he needed to do his accounting. It gave her what she felt was a right to weigh in on the larger financial decisions in the family - with her mother dead, somebody had to do it, and she enjoyed it more than Kasumi did.

Genma simply laughed at Nabiki's words, seemingly unoffended by her directness. "Ah, Tendo, but she is the spitting image of your wife! I'm well aware I will need to pull my weight here as well; I already have a part-time job lined up," he boasted with what Nabiki considered an excessively smug grin.

"Wait, really? Who'd hire you?" Ranma asked, looking at his father skeptically, his long experience making Ranma skeptical of the legality of his father's potential 'job'.

"The local chiropractor needed an assistant, as it so happens. He thought I was just the man for the job," Genma responded, taking up a wounded mien at his son's doubt. "And speaking of employment... the three of you had better hurry up and eat, or you'll be late for school," he added, before resuming wolfing down his own portion, which had miraculously refilled itself somehow.

Nabiki, Akane and Ranma shared glances, but hurried to finish off their meals and head on their way.

Once they'd gotten a good distance away from the house, Nabiki couldn't resist asking Ranma - who had refrained from jumping up to take to the fenceline this morning, "So... you really don't have a home of your own?"

"Assuming we ever did, I figure the old man sold it years ago," Ranma confessed lightly, not bothered by the question. "My oldest memories are wandering the roads of Japan. Pops always told me he used to carry me on his back before I was old enough to walk. I've never had a roof over my head that wasn't going to be temporary before."

"Your mother just let it happen?" Akane asked, curious despite herself. Having lived her entire life with a loving family and family home, Akane couldn't imagine never having a safe place to rest or escape from her troubles.

"She was never in the picture. Assuming she's alive, I always figured she dumped the old man before I could remember her," Ranma explained, and both the Tendo sisters winced at his words.

Although Ranma tried to sound nonchalant, both Nabiki and Akane could recognize the sad, almost haunted look in the young Saotome's eyes. They wore similar expressions on the anniversary of their own mother's passing, after all. Nabiki hesitated for a moment, looking at her sister to silently check if it was okay. Akane simply nodded; she figured Ranma was probably curious about it anyway. Thus emboldened, Nabiki replied, "Our own mother fell sick about ten years ago. Came on suddenly. The doctors couldn't help her."

Ranma glanced over at her, and gave her a silent, but appreciative nod. He nodded to Akane as well, if a bit shorter, but her younger sister nodded back as the three continued on, a little closer after their shared histories.

The trio made good time and in a few minutes arrived at the gates to Furinkan High School... which is where they stopped dead in their tracks. The entirety of the Hentai Horde was gathered there, clad in their usual paraphernalia, looking grim and determined to the last.

"Hey, what gives!? You guys were supposed to quit this routine!" Akane snapped, glowering angrily at her myriad unwanted suitors. "I should have known Kuno would break his word..."

"Akane Tendo, you wound me dearly!" came the cry of protest. Kuno, clad in his school uniform for once, pushed his way through the crowd, walking over to stand next to the Tendo Dojo trio. "I assure you, my tigress, I had nothing to do with this gathering!" he assured her, a hand placed on his heart for emphasis.

"Then what's going on, Kuno?" Akane replied dryly, a hand gesturing to the testosterone tumble before her.

"Akane, forgive us!" Said one of the gathered students. "But we cannot simply let you go without a fight!" added a second. "So, Ranma Saotome - defend yourself!" cried a third - and then, at that signal, the entire Horde suddenly charged forward, hollering battlecries as they thundered towards Furinkan's newest student, who'd been barely paying attention before the declaration of attack yanked his attention back to the proceedings quite firmly.

Akane yelped in shock, Kuno withdrew his bokken and took up a protective stance in front of her, and Nabiki instinctively drew back, but Ranma simply frowned, cracked his knuckles, and then met the Hentai Horde's charge with one of his own.

The three teens watched as he slammed into the gathered perverts of Furinkan like a divine thunderbolt, a blur of motion that left flying bodies in his wake. The air was filled with desperate battlecries, and the distinctive sound of sharp, fleshy impacts.

Even Akane couldn't help but feel impressed as Ranma wove around her assailants and pounded them senseless; it wasn't exactly the break from the routine she had hoped for, but it was better than nothing. "I wonder what made those idiots think of pulling this," she wondered, even as a sumo wrestler came flying through the air to land on his back in front of her.

"Twas his showboating yesterday, Akane Tendo," Kuno explained with aplomb. "Because of his own...seeming displays of cowardice, the fools thought that maybe they could stand up to Saotome's wrath even if he had managed to fell me."

"So you're not denying that Ranma beat you?" Akane asked, surprised that Kuno's ego wasn't pushing him to declare it a cheat or some such.

"Much as it chagrins me, there is no point to pandering to my pride in such a fashion. Better to focus on honing my skills and taking a swift, certain vengeance in the near future," Kuno explained with what he no doubt considered to be solemn resolution...but to Akane looked more like the onset of deep rooted constipation.

"Wow, that might just be the smartest thing you've said all year," Nabiki quipped, taking bets from students coming in on how late this would make Ranma or how many would be stubborn enough to land themselves in the nurse's office.

"Viper-tongued wench! How Saotome tolerates you as his betrothed I shall never understand," Kuno snapped back at her, once again raising the prices he would have to pay for anything he needed from her in Nabiki's book. _Kuno-baby just doesn't know when to quit_ she thought to herself with an unchanged smirk, although her right eye was twitching slightly.

"So, does this mean Ranma's going to have to fight them every morning now?" Akane interjected - she didn't really want to have to beat Kuno senseless this morning if she could avoid it.

"Nay, Akane Tendo; this was their last gasp effort. Saotome's imminent victory will surely scatter what little steel these boorish weaklings had mustered; they shall not bother you again," Kuno assured her, acting as if it were his doing. As Ranma had already laid out more than half of the Horde by this point, his words sounded quite convincing.

"So that means things will be going back to normal from here on," Nabiki added cheerfully, watching as her fiance dispatched the last holdouts of the Hentai Horde - many of those who hadn't fallen already turning and running as it sank in how outclassed they truly were.

* * *

Meanwhile...

* * *

The sun beat down over the coast, the dunes sprawling seemingly forever as the wind raced in off of the sea and carried dust and grit across the expanse. Through this desert-like wasteland, a lone figure sketched out a meandering course, clad in well-worn hooded cloak and goggles to protect against the sun and flying sand. On and on he trudged, indifferent to the bleakness of his surroundings, for he had a greater purpose.

' _Ranma Saotome... I will find you, and make you_ _ **pay**_ _...'_

It was rare that he had cause to be happy during his wanderings, and rarer still as of late, but fortune had given him one of her rare smiles when he'd stumbled across that witch in Hong Kong. She had assured him that his enemy could be found back in his homeland, attending Furinkan High School in Tokyo's Nerima district, and so that was where he was headed.

To somebody else, it might have seemed a longshot. But what other choice did he have? If he simply wandered aimlessly, he might never exact his revenge...

* * *

Lunchtime at Furinkan...

* * *

"Ah, perfect timing! We were about to come looking for you," Nabiki chirped as Ranma approached the tree where she and her henchwomen were sitting. "Ranma, meet Kikuko and Ryonami," she said, gesturing first to the girl with long, curly, orange-brown hair, and then to the light brown-haired girl with a pageboy cut. "Girls, meet my fiance," she added.

"Well, hello there..." Ryonami purred, giving Ranma a grin that reminded him of a shark he'd met whilst swimming to China.

"Oooh, wow, he really is a handsome one! You're so lucky, Nabiki," Kikuko gushed, making Ranma blush as she looked at him with almost glittering eyes.

"Now girls, behave," Nabiki playfully scolded them, giving a less than playful narrowing of the eyes above her cheerful smile. "Ranma, the girls and I are going to be hitting the shopping mall after school - would you like to come with?"

"Eh... sure. Sounds like it could be fun," Ranma responded, smiling and shrugging his shoulders nonchalantly as he spoke, not knowing the horrors that would await him.

Meanwhile, at that same time in Shikoku...

A masculine scream split the air of a quiet village in the mountains of Shikoku as one of the residents ran for his life along the rugged paths. "This is a disaster!" he bellowed. "A wild boar's coming! A wild boar's coming!" he shouted for all to hear, making for the watch-tower and its disaster bell as if his life depended on it.

And indeed, arguably it did! For this was no mere ornery pig that came racing along the path behind him. This was a true monster; a snorting behemoth the size of a tractor, bred and raised in the rugged forests of Shikoku. Fearless, bad-tempered and all but unstoppable; a swinezilla descended from the hills to trample, crush and gore anything in its wake.

Chaos erupted in the village as people dropped whatever they were doing and ran for their lives to the gathering point. Behind them, the giant boar rampaged, smashing through windows - and walls, crushing stalls, knocking over tractors, upsetting carts and generally destroying everything in its way.

From his position in the watchtower, the villager who had first stumbled upon the monster watched in horror. "That boar's gonna tear this here village to pieces!" he lamented. But what could they do? A creature like that was beyond their ability to fight - they had no weapons beyond farm implements, a smattering of bows, and maybe a handful of low-powered varmint rifles; stuff that wouldn't do anything more than make such a monstrous boar madder than it already was. Still, at least the villagers had all managed to get out of the way...

And that was when he realized that somebody hadn't; a youth he didn't recognize was wandering through the streets - and the boar was coming up behind him fast! "Hey, you! Look out!" He called to the stranger. "Run for it!" he pleaded - but it was no use. The kid didn't seem to hear him, and the boar was coming up fast - any second now, and it'd be right on top of him!

Resigned to the inevitable, the villager cowered, throwing an arm over his closed eyes to shield himself from the gory sight about to befall his once-peaceful home... and heard nothing. No screams of pain. No sounds of anybody fighting for their lives. Hesitantly, he opened his eyes... and saw that the stranger was holding the boar at bay! The youth had thrust out a bamboo traveling umbrella with one hand, jabbing it right into the middle of the boar's snout... and despite the way the startled hogzilla was trying to push forward, hooves gouging at the dirt road, the kid was holding it back effortlessly!

And then, as the villagers called out in awe, the youth removed his umbrella and let the boar charge forward, only to effortlessly duck beneath the goring tusks and catch the massive swine in the middle, launching it into the air! One dumbfounded boar went flying up, several stories into the sky... but what comes up, must come down, and so it was that it found itself falling back to earth, peddling its hooves in a futile attempt to arrest its flight before it landed squarely on its head, partially burying its snout into the earth. And there it sat, the fight clearly gone out of it.

Hesitantly, the awestruck villagers gathered around their unlikely savior, wondering aloud just what could enable a human to fight off such a beast - and so effortlessly at that! The villager from the tower slid down the ladder and approached their champion. "Do y'all do them martial arts or somethin'?" he asked.

Instead, the yellow-clad youth simply held up a map to the villager. "Tell me; where is Furinkan High School?" he asked, quietly and politely despite the abruptness of his question.

Confused, but eager to answer a question for the savior of his village, the villager looked at the map... but then, a moment's later, he frowned in confusion. "Hey... that there map's a map of Tokyo!" he pointed out.

"Well, of course! The school's gotta be around here somewhere," the stranger replied.

"But... this here's Shikoku," the villager pointed out.

Quiet fell over the villagers as they watched their savior, who visibly twitched at his words. "Sh-Shikoku? Very well. Goodbye."

And with that, he turned and walked away, leaving a very confused crowd of villagers behind him. "What was... that?" their spokesman wondered. But nobody had any answers.

* * *

In Tokyo that afternoon...

* * *

"I can't believe that he came! Not a lot of guys want to hang out with girls on a shopping spree," Ryonami confessed to Nabiki.

"What can I say? Ranma's no ordinary guy," the middle Tendo replied, a confident smirk on her lips.

At that moment, a jerk on a motorcycle came roaring past, hitting a puddle in the street with such force that the dirty water splashed over the four teens, who yelped and squalled in shock.

"Ya stupid jerk! Watch where yer goin'!" Ranma called after the douchebag, who didn't even bother to look back. "Road hogs..." she growled, wringing out the front of her shirt... then glancing up and flinching at the dumbfounded looks on Kikuko and Ryonami's faces. "Ah, great..."

"What? How? But!" Ryonami babbled.

"He-He changed! He was a boy! Now he's a girl!" Kikuko boggled, looking desperately at Nabiki.

The middle Tendo sighed. "Like I said... Ranma's no ordinary guy..."

* * *

That evening, in Hokkaido...

* * *

The farmer looked at the map he had been handed, and frowned. Although the sun was setting, there was still plenty of light to see by, and he could make out the details clearly. "Furinkan High School?" he repeated, looking up at the youth who had interrupted him as he milked his cows. When the stranger nodded, he stood up to look him in the eye and said, "This here ain't Tokyo, boy."

After a moment to let the farmer's words sink in, the strange youth replied, "This wouldn't be... Hokkaido?" He sounded quite resigned to the fact, especially as the farmer nodded. Odd feller.

Still, the farmer wanted to be helpful, and so he beckoned the youth to follow him. He took him to the nearby slope and pointed at the road that ran down below. "That there road there boy goes to the Seikan Tunnel just up the way. Now if y'all wanna go to Tokyo then y'all gotta go straight down that there road."

"Go straight, you say?" the youth asked.

"Yessir. Straight as the crow flies, you bet," the farmer assured him.

"Thanks for your help!" The youth said, already jogging down the escarpment towards the road.

"Y'all come back now, y'hear?" The farmer called after him, seeing him off with a friendly wave.

As the friendly farmer disappeared into the distance behind him, and the sun continued its slow descent below the horizon, the traveling youth cursed himself in the privacy of his own head - not for the first time, certainly not for the last. ' _Why? Why can't I ever get where I'm going? What's wrong with me?'_ he lamented.

But he didn't spend too long pitying himself. Now he had a road to follow, and vengeance to attain! The asphalt flew by as he jogged along at a pace few others could have matched on foot... right up until the road curved around to the right. He spotted a sign past the bend, but he refused to be swayed; he knew his goal!

"Straight it is!" he shouted, and poured on the speed, racing to where the road bent and smashing through the guard-rail before leaping down into the forested wilderness at the bottom of the hill. No sooner had he hit the ground than he was off again, still keeping a straight course from where he had started, ploughing relentlessly through the underbrush.

A pity he had been so literal-minded about his directions. Had he only stopped to read the sign, he would have seen that it indicated the Seikan Tunnel lay another twelve kilometers to the right, following the road - and Tokyo lay beyond that...

Ignorant to his grievous mistake, as the setting sun turned the forest into a tangle of shadows and fiery light, the youth continued his mad sprint. "I can do it! I can make it to Tokyo!" he vowed. Branches smacked against his face and limbs, catching him in the stomach as he pelted along, but he refused to stop. "Gotta make it to Tokyo!" he growled, bulldozing his way through the densest thickets.

On and on he ran, as night fell and then dawn rose, never once stopping no matter how many bruises he collected in his headlong flight. Finally, as the morning sun shone overhead, he stopped to catch his breath... and realized he was nowhere near Tokyo. He glared back and forth, and then he turned around and walked back into the forest.

"Just you wait, Ranma!" he howled, his hatred echoing through the wilderness. Even if it took him the rest of his life, he would find Tokyo, and there would be a reckoning!

* * *

Chapter End & Closing Notes

* * *

And so we come to another chapter's conclusion... but I'm sure you're all just itching for the next chapter, am I right?

Now, I'm honestly surprised that nobody guessed what Kuno was going to do in the reviews for last chapter, but then, Kuno does have a memetic reputation as an idiot, and a lot of the ideas I have seem to come out of left field to most Ranma readers. Whilst the memes may make Kuno's reactions in this chapter seem implausible, remember that Kuno has never had a direct explanation for Ranma's curse in canon. They've always danced around the issue, leading Kuno to believe both that the "pigtailed girl" is real, and that Ranma knows a spell that lets them trade places. In this scenario, Kuno gets that explanation - and also hasn't had the chance to ogle the pigtailed girl that he got in canon - so he's neither ignorant nor wanting to deny reality due to his attraction to "her".

Fun fact; I'm actually not rushing Ryoga's appearance. Ryoga canonically entered the anime in the 7th episode, which chronologically took place somewhere around 3-5 days after the start of the series. So, this story is chronologically about the same point as the canon intro.

Now, some readers have asked what I'm going to do with P-chan and, by extension, the other "Akane-centric" storylines, given that she's no longer the primary female protagonist. Suffice it to say, I have a plan, although for P-chan in particular... you'll see the start of where I'm going in the next chapter, but where it ends, I'll be very impressed if anyone can guess. Suffice it to say that the Japanese Nanniichuan arc will be quite a change from canon...

Speaking of work... I thought folks might like to know the other projects I have in the pipeline at this moment. I'd love to hear which one(s) folks would like me to get started on and push out alongside Heated Storm here.

The first, as mentioned in the last chapter, is a Ranma 1/2 crossover with Dungeons & Dragons: taking its starting point from the "Nabiki, Ranma's New Fiancee!" arc, it will see Ranma, Nabiki, Shampoo and Ukyo accidentally stumble through a one-way portal to Sigil, the most prominent multiversial hub in D&D canon, and be stranded there - which will force them to team up in order to survive and ultimately find a way home.

The second, inspired by the 2019 re-release of Resident Evil 2, is Ranma 1/2 crossover with Resident Evil. Rather than just putting Ranma into the events of the games, though, this will be an "analogue" universe; Ranma and company existing in the RE universe, but interacting with it off to the side, rather than crossing paths with the canon cast. Starting with an outbreak in Japan in 1995, three years before the canonical Arklay Incidents. I'm tempted to start a new FFN Forum for this one, because it will require a lot of work to come up with appropriate monsters, mutants, and biohazard incidents - we're already planning to incorporate RE: Dash (the canceled original version of RE3) and the Castle Prototype for RE4 - and having fans weigh in with ideas could be helpful. What do folks think?

There's other ideas on my mind, but these two are the major projects I've got prepwork of some kind done for.


	5. A New Rival Arrives! Who is Ryoga?

Author's Notes:

Firstly, apologies for the long gap in posting time. Real life has just been a major mess - we're doing our best to get things back onto a more frequent keel, despite what it's been throwing at us.

I'm a little surprised that nobody saw my twist in the previous chapter's opening coming, but pleased that folks took it in such stride! It's reassuring to know that I can write something so different from the cliches and still be warmly welcomed here.

As for the D&D crossover fic, which seems to be very much a source of interest... I'm not sure when I'll start on that. I was thinking maybe try and get into it soon, even alternate between postings for it and postings for this. I really don't know.

Also, let me clear up something that people seemed to be confused by: **I** don't believe that Nabiki is canonically bisexual. I was just listing the "evidence" that is frequently cited by people who **do**. I personally feel they're reaching, but then, we have so many people who like to cite even flimsier evidence as proof that Ranma & Ryoga are meant to be lovers, so what can you do?

* * *

 _ **Chapter 5: A New Rival Arrives! Who is Ryoga?**_

* * *

The sun shone down on an 'ordinary' morning in Nerima, Tokyo, as three not-so-ordinary students casually jogged through the streets in the direction of Furinkan High School.

"You're kidding! They actually tried to put Ranma in a dress?!" Akane giggled gleefully at her sister's explanation, lost in imaginings of Ranma running helter-skelter from a dress like some western vampire from garlic.

"Once they got over the shock of the transformation, yes. Kikuko was fascinated by the idea of having a guy friend she could also play dress up with," Nabiki confessed mischievously, smirking at the memories of yesterday afternoon. An inarticulate noise of frustration made her glance up at the fenceline beside her. "Oh, don't be mad, Ranma; she didn't mean anything bad by it," she said, trying to console her fiance although the thinly surprised mirth in her voice lessened the effect somewhat.

The sole male member of the trinity simply let out a disgusted click of his tongue and pointedly kept his gaze away from Nabiki, still trotting along the fenceline. "I told them both I was a guy! Why did they keep trying to put me in a skirt?" he groused, giving his fiance another in what was a series of looks of betrayal which had started when the normally cool Nabiki had given herself stitches laughing the other day..

"Hey, at least they weren't creeped out by it - that's a good thing, right?" Nabiki asked, still trying to assuage him whilst getting a better handle on her amusement.

"Honestly, you could probably use a few female outfits. It might keep you from running around the house naked all the time," Akane dryly observed.

"Ah, what do you know?" Ranma scoffed back.

"She does have a point... I mean, we can't just give you an endless supply of hot water, Ranma. Our electricity and gas bills won't handle it if you have to run a hot bath the very moment you get splashed..." Nabiki admitted, already it'd required some adjustments on her part and sooner they nipped this in the bud, the sooner her poor depleted shopping budget could recover.

Ranma said nothing in response to that. He just looked ahead with a stubborn expression on his face. Nabiki privately hoped he wasn't going to sulk for too long; it had just been a bit of harmless fun! Nabiki then and there decided she rather disliked it when Ranma gave her the cold shoulder like this...

Soon enough, the gates of Furinkan High School loomed before them... as did a rather unexpected figure.

"Ranma Saotome, I challenge you!" Kuno declared sternly, wooden sword outthrust in a fighting position as he blockaded the way, a convenient breeze making his outfit flow with the wind.

"...Are you serious?" Ranma finally replied after a moment or three of bemused staring, looking at Kuno as if he'd lost his wits. Which, admittedly, was not a far leap as far as most who knew Kuno were concerned.

"I told you I would challenge you again, Saotome!" Kuno retorted bombastically, flourishing his bokken triumphantly.

"Yeah, but not this early, surely? I mean, come on, your eyes are still black as inkstones," Ranma pointed out, his gesture towards the older male's rather impressive pair of shiners making Kuno grimace.

"I... vile Saotome! I shall fight on!" he shouted defiantly, stabbing the air towards Ranma as if to inject the opposing male with the desire to battle.

"Yeah, yeah, fine - but why don't we do it when you're actually back to full strength? I don't want to bully no weakling," Ranma replied, legitimately concerned about Kuno and the effects fighting too soon could have.

...Kuno's reaction, however, showed how much the effort worked..

"You insolent wretch!" Kuno bellowed in outrage at the idea that he might be weak, and charged Ranma... who met him mid-charge. With some deft footwork that neither Nabiki nor Akane could quite follow, Ranma was able to simultaneously dodged around him and tripped him flat on his face.

"Later, Kuno, I got class," Ranma threw over his shoulder, already sprinting off to his homeroom.

"You will rue this day!" Kuno vowed after him from the ground, spitting out bits of dirt that he'd accidentally eaten.

"And yet, somehow, this feels normal," Nabiki observed with a light, almost distant tone as she and her sister walked by the mud spewing Kuno, giving a small shrug at the end.

"I'm just glad that Kuno's forgotten all about me," Akane responded with deep seated relief... but she spoke too soon, for in an instant as if summoned like a spirit of misfortune, Kuno had leapt up from his position on the ground and wrapped her in a passionate embrace.

"Oh, my love, I could never forget you!" he 'assured' her, rubbing his cheek lovingly against her own in a passionate invasion of personal space.

"Get off of me, you pervert!" Akane screamed out, slapping Kuno across the face with such fervor he flew several meters through the air before slamming into the ground once again.

"The more things change, the more they stay the same," Nabiki mused wistfully, smirking at the familiar sight of her little sister beating Kuno senseless. Then she hurried off to her own classes; she didn't want to be late, after all.

* * *

That afternoon, at school's end...

* * *

"When I said I'd fight you later, I didn't mean this very afternoon!" Ranma protested, ducking as Kuno slashed at his head, wondering if he'd need to get a friggin lawyer involved to get Kuno to stop interpreting things so overzealously.

"You won't escape me with your cursed logic, Saotome! Defend yourself!" the enraged kendoist declared, chasing Ranma out through the front doors of Furinkan High and onto the grounds beyond.

Now, it bears mentioning that Ranma could have just kicked Kuno senseless again, but it wasn't really in Ranma's nature to bully people...well, beyond poking at their emotional weak points to goad at least. It wasn't as if Kuno could actually hurt him, so just dodging his attacks and trying to talk some sense into the lunkhead wasn't costing him anything and it was some decent flexibility training as well.

With effortless ease and grace, Ranma wove around his fellow students, and then took one of his now-infamous flying leaps to put further distance between himself and his pursuer... which was when he suddenly found himself under attack from the front! Looking up, Ranma's eyes widened in surprise as he saw another boy leaping at him, descending from a greater height with a bamboo traveling umbrella being brought down in an overhead stabbing motion.

"Ranma, prepare to die!" bellowed the stranger as they plunged back down to earth, his speed and aim making the threat less bombast than he usually heard of late.

But Ranma had no intention of complying with such a 'polite request' like that! He twisted about in midair with eel-like flexibility, so that when the two of them hit the ground, the umbrella's tip slammed into the earth first, whilst Ranma landed neatly on his right hand just in front of his crouching assailant, legs twisted up over his head. A flex of his fingers, and Ranma leapt backwards to land several meters away, eliciting gasps and noises of awe from the watching crowd... though whether it was at the sight of Ranma jumping with one arm or the way the earth suddenly sank into a meter-deep crater that stretched a good meter or two out from where Ranma's assailant had landed, who could say.

Ranma watched the stranger warily; unlike Kuno, this was a real threat. He didn't even notice as Kuno, Nabiki and Akane came up behind him, Kuno's own outrage momentarily stifled at the sight of this stranger and his sudden attack on Kuno's new rival.

The stranger; a rough-looking Japanese boy with brown eyes and messy short black hair tied back with a tiger-stripe bandanna, simply smirked. "At last I found you... Ranma Saotome," he declared darkly. Standing up, he then added, "I see you're still good at running away, Saotome."

"I say, that's rather poor form, attacking Saotome whilst I was trying to engage him in combat!" Kuno protested, despite having let the Hentai Horde attack Akane en mass before, this was _his_ fight..

Nabiki dared to get up closer to her fiance now that the immediate landscaping seemed to be over. "Who is this guy? Do you know him?" she asked Ranma, wondering what part of his rather colorful past she'd be privy to now.

Ignoring them both, the stranger pontificated with melodramatic fervor, "I feel as though I've been waiting for this moment for thousands of years!"

"Quite a melodramatic fellow, isn't he?" Kuno observed, oblivious to (or perhaps ignoring) the incredulous stares and unspoken observation of pots speaking of kettles from the Tendo sisters.

Ranma simply looked befuddled, rubbing his chin as he wracked his brain to remember. The guy obviously acted like they had met before, but he just couldn't place him...

"Are you still feigning ignorance, Saotome?" the stranger snapped in indignant outrage, possibly at being implied to be so forgettable... although Nabiki was getting a handle on this guy, and it read 'easy to irk'.

"I'm not so sure he's feigning," Akane replied mischievous tone, grinning at the chance to get in a zing at Ranma.

Ranma ignored her, instead bending his head forward and placing his fingers on his temples, obviously trying to force the memories into place. It would have been more comical if the tense atmosphere hadn't remained entrenched.

Seeing this, the stranger's anger shifted to outright shock and disbelief. "What?! You really mean you don't remember?"

' _If this were one of those American cartoons, this guy's jaw would be on the ground,'_ Nabiki thought to herself. It was an amusing image, she had to admit.

Ranma promptly shook his head, confirming everybody's suspicions. Then he suddenly stopped, eyes brightening as he snapped his fingers triumphantly... Only to then fade back into uncertainty as the thought slipped free of his metaphorical fingers.

By this point, the stranger was visibly trembling with rage. "Enough of this mockery! Answer me one thing Saotome: why didn't you come to fight me at the appointed time!?" he thundered with a raised, accusatory finger.

At this interloper's latest demand, Ranma's face lit up and he pointed at the stranger in vindicated excitement. "Now I remember! You and I were classmates in Junior High, right? It was... ah...um..." he trailed off again; memories could be such slippery things...names too, he pondered to himself whilst everyone around him simply felt beads of disbelieving sweat slide down their faces at his absentmindedness.

"It's Ryoga Hibiki!" the stranger finally snapped with his voice rising several octaves as his flushed face suggested he was nearing an apoplexy of rage. The now named Ryoga pushed his face into Ranma's own as if proximity would help jar Ranma's memory...or was an aborted headbutt, to some of the onlookers.

"Yeah, that was it!" Ranma agreed with a cheerful nod - he had finally managed to recollect who this guy was and the ease of mental strain was a balm to his wracked brain. At this point, Ranma was smiling ear to ear, and he reached out to put a friendly hand on Ryoga's shoulder. "Long time no see!" he chirped, only for the smile on his face to be replaced with surprise as Ryoga brusquely slapped his hand away.

"Just answer my question you coward! Tell me; why didn't you come to the fight?!" Ryoga demanded angrily, his eyes practically shuttered slits covering pools of rage.

Now Ranma looked absolutely flummoxed . "But... I... Ryoga... I waited for you at the agreed place for three days!" he pointed out .

"Three days!?" chorused Kuno and the Tendos in disbelief, it now being their turn to kiss the dirt with the bottom of their jaws in a unified display of amazement.

Ryoga simply scoffed, turning his head in a disdainful dismissal of Ranma's excuse. "Oh, sure, you waited three days. But when I got there on the fourth day, you had already turned tail and ran!" he crowed spitefully as he turned to point at Ranma once more

"Fourth day?!" was the new chorus of dumbfounded voices, their mouths showing prescience and not bothering to be raised and thus avoiding the sensation of whiplash..

Now it was Ranma's turn to look serious, and a bit condescending if one was to be honest. "Uh, Ryoga... lemme ask **you** a question," he said, to which Ryoga simply gave him a suspicious look in reply but didn't interrupt.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but the place where we agreed to meet for the fight? Was the vacant lot behind your house, right?" Ryoga nodded, wondering what Ranma was getting at, " So why the heck did I have to wait more than three days for you to show?!" he snapped. "Seriously, I stood there for three days and nights, I didn't eat, I didn't sleep, I just waited and waited, through sun and rain, until finally I collapsed!"

Ryoga glared lividly at Ranma, screaming, "Don't patronize me! Did you think I was just strolling around Japan for my health?!"

"So what were you doing?" Ranma asked simply.

"Listen! You've absolutely no idea the troubles I've endured!" Ryoga blustered vehemently, . "I started out the morning of the fight, and I ran to meet you! I ran, and I ran, and I ran, and I couldn't find that cursed lot! I went to Enoshima, Osaksa, the Tokyo Tower, Yokohama... and then finally, finally I made it to the lot... and you'd run away like a coward!"

"That's utter nonsense!" Kuno blurted out, finding himself in the unusual position of having to actually _defend_ a rival of his. "There's not a referee in the country who wouldn't have disqualified you for being an hour late, never mind four whole days! If you were that inept at finding your way there, then Ranma clearly won by default," he decreed.

Say what you will about Kuno, that he was crazier than a loon, been smacked with a book on samurai too much as a kid, or that he was as obsessive as a dog with a bone...but the Kunos were nothing if not sticklers for the letters of the rule, and there was no way Ryoga had a case in the upperclassman's mind.

"Shut up, pretty boy! Nobody asked you!" Ryoga growled at him, ignoring the susurrus of the other students agreeing that, for once, Kuno had a point and that Ryoga clearly was an idiot.

Fixating his attention on Ranma, Ryoga addressed his old enemy, "You went and broke a man-to-man promise! And then you dared to run off to China with your father?!" At that, he swung at Ranma with his umbrella, using it like a club.

Ranma simply leapt backwards, neatly evading it. "So let me get this straight; you came all this way to finish the fight?" Ranma didn't look exactly confused at the prospect, but Nabiki could tell he was still trying to match Ryoga's vitriol with the other boy's stated goals and was coming up short.

"I didn't come to finish it! This fight has just begun! This is revenge!" Ryoga screamed fervently, as he flicked open his umbrella and launched it at Ranma as a spinning projectile that created a buzz saw like sound as it swirled past Ranma, and then swung back like a boomerang towards his 'foe'.

Not that this bothered Ranma, who effortlessly dodged it with a simple twist of his body on both passes, not even bothering to look back to see where the killer umbrella was making its return pass towards him. He didn't even flinch or cringe at this rather lethal assault, instead asking again in perplexity, "Revenge? Revenge for what? What'd I ever do to you to make you want revenge on me?"

Catching the returning umbrella, Ryoga held it over his head like a banner of war. "Don't play dumb with me! I'm going to destroy your happiness!" he vowed, his eyes alight with the fires of obsession.

Ranma looked taken aback at Ryoga's words as did everyone else, Kuno included. "M-my happiness...? ...Where do you come up with this stuff?" he asked, a sweat drop of disbelief sliding down his cheek.

"More importantly, what did you do to him, Ranma?" Nabiki asked incredulously, deliberate malice or not on Ranma's part, there was clearly **something** driving this whole incident.

"I got no idea why he's so mad!" Ranma protested without any shred of duplicity, already wracking his brains to try and figure out what the problem was. Now, come to think of it, just why had he and Ryoga been going to duel each other in that vacant lot anyway...?

"Enough stalling already! Let's fight, Ranma!" Ryoga bellowed once more, before shifting his umbrella into a low-pointing spear-thrust position and charging forward to possibly skewer Ranma like a shish-kebab.

Immediately, Kuno grabbed Akane and withdrew from the impact zone, with Nabiki likewise fleeing off to the side. Her heart skipped a beat as she realized that Ranma didn't even seem to notice Ryoga's charge; instead, his face was lighting up as he smacked his palm in realization. "Ranma, watch out!" she called out impulsively.

But Ranma didn't watch out. He didn't even move; instead, he just held out his hand in front of Ryoga's face in a "stop!" gesture, not even flinching as his charging assailant skidded to a halt mere moments before crashing into him, his umbrella thrust past Ranma's face like a spear. Ranma could have just had his teeth knocked down his throat, and as far as anyone could tell, he didn't even blink at his brush with death.

Gasps and murmurs of approval erupted from the watching students at this display of cool under fire. Nabiki distinctly heard somebody nearby mutter, "That Saotome's got more balls than brains!" and privately agree... though she also couldn't deny that he'd looked really, _really_ cool doing that!

"Ryoga... excuse me for a sec, huh? Wait here," Ranma said, cool as a cucumber. Then he wove around Ryoga and ran for the gates to Furinkan High.

"Hey, come back here!" Ryoga protested feebly, his momentum both emotional and physical utterly halted by Ranma's rather out of place actions.

 _'He looks more like a dog that had forgotten why it was barking than a teenager in a towering rage,'_ thought Nabiki.

"I'll be back in a sec!" Ranma called back in assurance, already disappearing out through the gates.

In his wake, he left a confused and puzzled audience. Kuno slowly shook his head as murmurs broke out around him from a rather put out audience. "Now what madness is percolating in that fevered brain of his?" he wondered aloud, causing a new resurgence of 'pot meet kettle' comments that he ignored with aplomb.

"Don't ask me... I don't think even Nabiki knows what he's thinking half the time," Akane conceded, too dumbfounded by what was going on to really protest Kuno's proximity at the moment. So long as he kept his hand on her shoulder, she supposed she could tolerate him for now.

Indifferent to the commentary behind him, Ranma pelted through the streets at close to his top speed. It had taken an embarrassingly long time to retrieve the relevant memories, but in his defense, he'd honestly never expected to see Ryoga again in his lifetime. Still, the connections had finally been made, and that gave him purpose; he was pretty certain he knew how to settle whatever was bugging Ryoga. Now, if he could only find... a **ha**!

In his rush through the streets, Ranma found himself coming upon the otherwise unusual sight of a giant panda bear sweeping at the doorway to what looked like a local chiropractic clinic.

Skidding to a halt in front of the overgrown cuddly toy, Ranma called out, "Yo, pop! You know where there's a sandwich vending machine?"

The panda let out a rumbling noise as he nodded his great furry head and withdrew, from seemingly nowhere, a sign bearing written instructions towards the nearest one.

"Thanks, pop!" Ranma said, and rushed on past where the sign directed. Moments later, he was running back past Genma, his arms full of various breads and sandwiches.

Genma wondered what that had all been about... not that it stopped him from grabbing the packet of bread that Ranma had dropped in his wake. He'd have to work on that with the boy; one didn't waste good food after all.

Back at Furinkan High School, the confusion of audience renewed once more as the absentee martial artist rejoined them, arms laden with flavored breads and sandwiches, whereupon coming to a complete stop he tossed one to Ryoga. The dusty vengeance-seeker snatched it from the air and looked at it uncomprehendingly. "Curry bread...? What the? Tell me, Saotome, now what are you...?"

"Howsabout it? Forgive and forget, whaddya say?" Ranma suggested hopefully, eliciting a furious scowl from Ryoga complete with growl.

"You mock me!" Ryoga snapped angrily, unthinkingly squeezing the curry bread in his fist and causing the plastic casing to pop.

Ranma simply sighed, although he did appear unsurprised to the onlookers. "Geeze, you're greedy. Okay here, chow mein bread, croquet bread, melon bread, cutlet sandwich, meat bread, seaweed bread..." And with each bread he named, he threw a corresponding packet to Ryoga, who caught them all as flawlessly as Ranma had thrown them, the shifting of the pile of edibles leading the audience to bob their heads like the viewers of a tenis match.

"Happy now? I didn't forget anything, did I?" Ranma asked with less than hidden impatience of his own

At this point, Ryoga was visibly fuming _is that steam coming out of his_ _ **ears**_? Nabiki thought to herself with some degree of horrified awe... though he'd also grabbed up all the bread that Ranma had thrown at him, too she'd observed. Well, who was she to fault Ryoga for taking up Ranma on a free meal, "What do you take me for, Ranma Saotome?!" he thundered in his fury, albeit looking slightly less impressive with a double-armfull of snack sandwiches.

"I must admit, I'm puzzled too - why the bread, Saotome?" Kuno interjected, trying to keep the titters threatening to bubble out under control. Despite himself, he was rather enjoying this little farce of his rival's but this had dragged on rather long and Kuno had practice to conduct at home.

"Some clarification _would_ be nice." Nabiki chimed in, her own curiosity beyond piqued at this point although she hid it better than the others..

"Well, this is why we were having that fight in the first place," Ranma explained matter-of-factly, as it were perfectly obvious.

"Over bread?" Everyone around the martial artists asked in unison, their in unison response causing Ranma to blanch for a moment.

"Hey, it makes more sense than you'd think!" Ranma protested defensively, holding his hands out to entreat them for a moment. "See, Ryoga and I met when we were attending the same all-boys junior high school - real low-class dump, nowhere near as fancy at Furinkan. But it was cheap and it was willing to accept a nomad like me, so that's all that pops cared about. Lunchtime was the worst; they never had enough funds to provide food for all the kids, so the lunch-ladies would just throw out whatever they had and let the boys fight for them," he explained.

"You're seriously telling us that you and Ryoga met... dueling over bread?" a dumbfounded Nabiki responded. She'd heard some...colorful stories from Papa when he'd had a couple cups of sake, but this was well into the territory of the odder ones

"Yep. I can remember it as if it were only yesterday, now; it was the last piece of curry bread left for the day. Lunch-lady threw it out, Ryoga jumped for it... and then I jumped past him and snagged it first," Ranma said, nodding to himself and smiling wistfully at the memory of an ancient victory.

By this point, Ryoga had unwrapped some of the bread and was surreptitiously chowing down; pride or no pride, it'd been too long since his last meal. He and Ranma had both taken a seat on the ground as Ranma told his little story, and so he was caught off-guard when Ranma looked at him and smirked, adding, "And then Ryoga gives me this big song and deal over how he'd never forgive me. You were blubbering over a piece of bread, for crying out loud!"

"Ah, shut up, Ranma!" Ryoga growled sheepishly, glaring at Ranma and everyone around them for good measure. When Ranma put it like that... it did sound a little pathetic, but he would be buried 3 years before he admitted that.

"But surely you jest, Saotome?" Kuno countered, his brow raised in 'majestic skepticism' although the school opinion was that he tended to look more like he was auditioning for Monty Python. "A single piece of bread is no cause for a duel, never mind for Ryoga to pursue you for so long."

"Well, the curry bread was kind of just the start of things. When he challenged me like that, I couldn't resist answering him, so we competed at every lunch thereafter. And I always won. First it was the chow mein bread. Then it was the croquet bread. The melon bread. Cutlet sandwich. Meat bread... let's see, seaweed bread, egg bread, salad sandwich, soup bread... no, wait, there's no such thing," Ranma amended himself.

At this point, Ryoga, Nabiki and Kuno were all staring flatly at Ranma, whilst Ranma's audience found trickles of sweat sliding comedically down their faces in disbelief

"I begin to see Ryoga's justification..." Kuno observed dryly, knowing that even if it were just over lunch bread, he would certainly wish to thrash someone who bested him so flagrantly, and soundly at that..

"Did you ever think maybe you were taking it a little overboard, Ranma?" Nabiki asked, although that was more for form, as she certainly wouldn't let someone who she had an edge over win like that...her merciless fleecing of Kuno was a testament to that.

"Hey, it's not like I was just letting Ryoga starve! He went right back and got something else afterwards, because he was the best brawler in the school... he just wasn't good enough to beat me!" Ranma squawked, giving Nabiki a mild look of betrayal that fell on unimpressed eyes .

"For your information, this goes far beyond bread, Saotome," Ryoga grumbled, superciliously wiping his mouth free of crumbs , his glare at Ranma only redoubling in intensity as he heard Ranma's take on their 'rivalry'.

Ranma simply gave him an innocent stare in reply. "Does it really?" he asked, his brain already beginning to ache in anticipation of another rummage through the proverbial mental back rooms.

"Of course it does!" Ryoga hollered at full blast, making some of the students that had carelessly gotten close to him clasp their hands over their ears.

Lunging to his feet, Ryoga grabbed his umbrella and responded to Ranma's put upon, "So what is it _now_?!" with a shout of "Don't play dumb!" before stabbing at Ranma with the bamboo implement.

Ranma shot backwards across the ground, performing a sort of high-speed roll that he turned into a handstand-spring to reach his feet before leaping up into the air, with Ryoga hot on his proverbial heels. "Come'on, tell me what this is about!" Ranma entreated, wanting to just get this whole thing over with so he could go back to the Tendo house, kick his dad around and have another Kasumi cooked dinner.

"Because of you, Saotome, I've seen Hell!" Ryoga roared, swinging his umbrella at Ranma like a club, only for Ranma to dodge with a lean backwards.

They both hit the ground on their feet, with Ranma turning back to face Ryoga. "I wish you'd just talk to me...coherently" Ranma added, since Ryoga's next rejoinder only proved Ranma's jab.

"As if mere words could convey my suffering!" Ryoga scoffed. He flicked his umbrella open and once again threw it at Ranma like a boomerang.

Nabiki began to make a mental list of how many times Ryoga used certain lines. It already wasn't short, and with depressing foresight Nabiki had a feeling that it would only get longer if Ryoga stuck around

This time, Ranma evaded it by leaping upwards and backwards, disappearing from view behind the crowd of students watching this sudden battle.

As the shaft of his umbrella slapped against his palm, Ryoga cursed and rumbled out loud. "I missed him!" And charged into the crowd, who parted rapidly before his latest bullrush. Without hesitating, Ryoga ran up the steps into Furinkan and right through Furinkan. As in, literally **through** the school's front floor!

The sounds of destruction echoed out to the dumbfounded students as Ryoga literally plunged headfirst through solid concrete walls, crushing desks and chairs underfoot as he ploughed on, screaming Ranma's name in the process.

Gawping at the sight of so much destruction, Nabiki turned back from the gaping hole Ryoga had torn through the front doors to see Ranma, standing only feet away from her and looking as bemused as she felt.

"Sheesh, where's he going? Is he lost again?" Ranma wondered aloud.

Minutes slowly ticked by, the sounds of destruction having faded into nothing, and the students began to drift away, none of whom were eager to call the teachers and get blamed for this. Nabiki went over to Ranma and put her hand on his arm. "Come on, Ranma; let's go home."

"But, Ryoga-" her fiance protested, not wanting to run from a fight.

"He's obviously lost by now - and if he took four days of constant searching to find a vacant lot behind his house, he's not getting back here any time soon," she calmly pointed out, much to Ranma's chagrin.

Ranma gave a manly display of discontent... or, rather, pouted like a little kid who just got told he couldn't play with his friend. Lucky for him that Nabiki thought he looked cute whilst doing so. But finally after a couple moments of stubborn heel digging, he nodded and allowed his fiancee to lead him back to the Tendo Dojo.

Ironically, as Nabiki was doing that, Ryoga was standing in front of the Tofu Chiropractic Clinic, staring dumbfounded at the panda sweeping off the front porch with a broom. Such was his shock at having literally run into the creature that it had managed to momentarily chase all thoughts of Ranma from his mind. Especially when it grinned at him and waved, as if it knew him somehow...

"Mr. Saotome? Do we have a visitor?" Came a voice from behind the panda's fuzzy bulk. A figure stepped around the creature, revealing itself as a handsome older man. "Why, hello there; I'm Dr. Tofu Ono, and this is my clinic. Can I help you?"

Ryoga instinctively shook his head, and then stopped. "Saotome!? As in... Ranma Saotome?"

"Oh, you know Mr. Saotome's son? I haven't met him yet, but Mr. Saotome tells me he's a fine young man - heir to the Saotome School, no less," Dr. Tofu said, still smiling in a genial manner .

...There was so much wrong with that sentence that Ryoga didn't know where to begin. But, this provided him an opportunity... "Do you know where Ranma Saotome is?"

"Why, he lives at the Tendo Dojo, with his fiancee, Nabiki Tendo. Would you like the address?" Dr. Tofu asked him, thinking this was nothing more than an out of town friend trying to reconnect with Ranma.

"Oh, yes, please! It would be so helpful!" Ryoga said, a grin spreading across his face that almost made Tofu pause. Finally, a bit of good luck! Now that he knew where Ranma lived, he would find that slippery little coward, and make him pay!

* * *

Later that evening...

* * *

Ryoga did his best not to make too much of a mess as he wolfed down the food that his hosts had so generously shared with him.

It had been **far** too long since he'd had a home-cooked meal, but he still had his manners. It had been so humiliating when he'd walked into the town hall in that little village in Shikoku - for the second time since he'd stopped that wild boar, no less! - but this was so good it was almost worth it.

"Poor young'un... By the looks of it, y'all must be halfway to starving!" said the village headman, still boisterously happy to see the hero of his village even after having feasted his own self earlier. "Lissen, why don't y'all forget about Tokyo and stay with us in this here village?"

Ryoga nearly choked on his rice at the very idea , but managed to swallow the mouthful. "No way! I'm sorry, I absolutely cannot! There's something I have to do in Tokyo!" he protested. He thought about springing up and returning to the hunt for Ranma... but, truth be told, he was exhausted. It'd been a long, _long_ couple of days. "Though... is it okay if I stay the night? I promise I'll just set my tent up somewhere that I won't be in the way..."

"A tent!" scoffed the headman. "Now, you lissen here, boy; you done saved this village from cranky ol' Ino, so y'all can stay right here tonight, y'hear me?"

"You're very generous, sir," Ryoga replied, sighing in relief. Then, a thought struck him. "Though... can I trouble you for some paper? I need to send a letter..."

* * *

At the Tendo Dojo...

* * *

"So, you saw Ryoga while you were at work, pop?" Ranma asked in between bites of Kasumi's latest dinner, his manners already noticeably improved between a 'diet' of positive reinforcement of more food from Kasumi and smiles from Nabiki, and negative reinforcement of hand smacks from Soun and Akane..

"That's right; he ran into me whilst he was running through the streets looking for you. I see he still couldn't find his way out of a closet," Genma replied sardonically, never having been impressed with Ryoga even when he and Ranma had been in school together. For all his faults, Genma was a firm believer in a martial artist always having situational awareness.

"That reminds me, pop; did Ryoga and I have some kind of fight going on besides that bread duel?"

"...Not that I can recall," Genma replied, after a moment's thought. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, he was acting really weird; he's super mad at me, but he insists it's about more than just the bread, and I sure as heck don't remember us having anything more to duel over than that!" Ranma explained, gesticulating for emphasis whilst keeping his chopsticks near his food in case of fatherly raids.

"Well, he never was the most reasonable of kids," Genma responded pensively. "I still can't believe you wouldn't let us go until the morning of the fourth day..."

"Hey, it was a man-to-man promise for a fight!" Ranma protested sheepishly, blushing slightly at the universally raised brows of the whole Tendo household.

"So, will Ryoga be coming back?" Nabiki interjected, in a small display of support to get the heat off Ranma's...less than sensible approach to appointment keeping. "Think we can get another little show together for the kids at Furinkan?"

She was already imagining scoring another few months worth of allowance when Ranma cleaned that loser's clock in front of everybody and the mischievous leer on her face made her father both amused and worried about his middle child in equal measure.

"Uh... yes and no?" Ranma finally replied, shrugging hopelessly. "I mean, ticked off as he was, I figure he's going to keep coming back until we settle things. But with how screwed up his sense of direction is... well, I got no way of knowing when he'll show up," he elaborated apologetically.

"Figures..." Nabiki sighed. Oh, she knew she could probably whip up some kind of betting on the fly, but if she'd been able to set things up beforehand, she would have been raking in the money!

* * *

Chapter End & Closing Notes

* * *

Now, this chapter will seem kind of short to people compared to the previous ones. In fact, originally, it was much longer, covering Ranma's first official duel with Ryoga as well as the introduction of P-chan. But, well, life and length have been conspiring against us, so we decided that a split would be in our best interest.

We can't be certain when the next chapter will be out, so we'll make no promises in regards release date. But we are working on it as hard as we can, and we'll share it as soon as possible.

Incidentally, those who've watched episode 7 will notice some... discrepancies... between it and what I describe going down in this chapter's first half or so (as there was in the Ryoga stuff in the last chapter). Beyond the tweaks to account for the different relationships laid to ground in this fic, there's also the fact that Ryoga's arrival in Nerima is actually one of the series earliest plot-holes! See, we have absolutely no idea how Ryoga figured out that Ranma was at Furinkan, nor how he learned he was at the Tendo Dojo, never mind how he sent Ranma that challenge letter that Ranma gets in the start of episode 8. So, I took a few liberties to try and explain how it was that those things came to be. Hopefully, they don't detract from your enjoyment of this fic!


	6. Fury of the Eternally Lost Boy!

Author's Notes:

Once again, apologies for the delay; real life just has not been cooperating with us recently. Still, we managed to get this ready at long last, so thanks for waiting patiently; consider this my birthday present to you all.

* * *

 _ **Chapter 6: Fury of the Eternally Lost Boy!**_

* * *

One week after the events of Chapter 5...

* * *

Sure enough, as Ranma had said, there was no sign of Ryoga the next day. The only challenger Ranma faced when he arrived at school was Kuno, and such was Ranma's brooding over his encounter with Ryoga that this time, he gave Kuno the fight he wanted... Well, if you could call "knocking him out cold with a single kick to the face" a fight. Kuno had woken up in time for class, but seeing Ranma take him down so nonchalantly had definitely done wonders for Ranma's reputation. Especially coming hot on the heels of his beating up the entire Hentai Horde himself.

This ignominious defeated hadn't quenched Kuno's thirst for retribution, and so he'd challenged Ranma in the exact same way the very next morning. And had lost again. And then again the next day. And the day after that. In fact, every single school day for a week, Ranma and Kuno met first thing in the morning, and Ranma knocked Kuno out senseless with a quick strike and left the elder boy to sit in a daze of bemusement and pain.

By this point, all doubt as to whether Ranma could really beat Kuno was well and truly squashed.

It was lunchtime at Furinkan, one week to the day after Ryoga's letter had arrived, when Kikuko hurried over to Nabiki. "Ryoga's here! He just showed up in the middle of a soccer field a few minutes ago!" she quickly informed her boss.

Nabiki's head snapped up from her bento; "Are he and Ranma fighting already?" she asked, resignation filling her voice like a politician in a too small suit.

Kikuko shook her head with some giggles slipping past her lips. "No! He was standing in the middle of the field as a game was being held - the ball hit him in the back of the head and knocked him out cold!" she reported, now openly giggling.

Ryonami snorted disdainfully from her own seat nearby. "What a moron."

"They took him to the nurse's office... Nabiki, do you think they're going to fight after school?" Kikuko asked, a hint of worry coloring her words once she got her mirth under control.

"If he doesn't wake up and get himself lost again, you can count on it,"Nabiki said decisively to her minion, before she did something no-one who knew her would believe possible...freely share information, "This isn't just any old grudge... so we're going to need to get ready to handle the betting! A pity we couldn't prepare for this sooner, but even Ranma had no idea when Ryoga would get here, challenge letter or no so it's not like we had a lot of other options."

"You mean he sent Ranma a formal challenge letter? Like in the old movies? And then he was late?" Ryonami scoffed incredulously as she rolled her eyes. "Like I said; total loser. Still, at least we can profit from his ineptitude"

"Actually... maybe we can run a betting pool on what this whole thing is about?" Kikuko suggested, giving Nabiki a nervous look. She didn't usually make suggestions like that; confidence wasn't the ginger's strong point.

"Running a pool where you don't know the odds is a sucker's game, Kikuko," Nabiki gently chided her, so as to not stifle Kikuko's budding initiative. "But nice thought, all the same."

"Wait, you mean Ranma hasn't told you what this is all about?" Ryonami asked, quirking an inquisitive eyebrow.

"He doesn't know! The last time he ever saw Ryoga was when they were setting up that stupid duel over the bread. If missing that fight isn't what this whole thing's about, then Ranma has no idea what Ryoga wants to fight over," Nabiki explained, her exasperation not hard to see.

Privately, it was bothering her. She didn't like not knowing things, and when it concerned **her** Ranma, well, it was frankly grating on her that this feud was so wrapped in mystery. But she consoled herself that her questions would be answered soon; once Ranma beat Ryoga senseless, then Ranma could **make** him give them all a straight answer as to what this was all about!

* * *

That afternoon...

* * *

Fortunately, it turned out that Ryoga was willing to swallow his pride and not only stay put after waking up in the Furinkan nurse's office, but also let somebody else lead him out to one of the fields after school was done for the day. The word of Ryoga's return had spread like wildfire, and once again people had gathered, anxious to see Ranma do battle. Ranma's repeated defeats of Kuno, who was watching (or sulking, as some would put it) from the sidelines, had made him something of the school's unofficial replacement champion in the eyes of many - but plenty had seen Ryoga's crater-making piledriver a week earlier, and the odds were fairly evenly matched. Nabiki and her henchwenches were actually struggling to keep abreast of the tides of votes and side-votes, hastily writing ticket stubs and calculating odds. Still, Nabiki spared at least the corner of her eye to watch as her fiance stood in the field, ready to do battle, and she wished him luck.

Even if it did make it a little harder for her to slant the odds to secure a better profit...

Oblivious to his girlfriend's thoughts on profit margins, Ranma stared down his old friend/adversary. The eternally lost boy was dirty and visibly travel-worn, but clearly undaunted; whether it was because his stamina was just that stupidly good - and Ranma remembered it as being one of Ryoga's better physical traits - or he'd just made the best of having half the school day to rest up in the nurse's office, who could say? Either way, Ranma knew that this time, the fight was going to be for real...

Oblivious to Ranma's thoughts, Ryoga clenched his fists and snickered to himself, a dark grin on his lips. "Welcome, Ranma! What cunning you showed in escaping last time!" he mockingly praised his foe.

At this, Ranma's expression grew thunderous; having spent the last week brooding over Ryoga's strange behavior, he was in no mood to tolerate that kind of slander. "Who're you talkin' about?! You're the one who wandered off and got lost, Ryoga!" he snapped back, thrusting an accusatory finger at his rival.

"Hey, shut up!" Ryoga snarled back his oh so witty retort, flushing at the titters from the crowd it garnered. "What would you know about it anyway?!"

Ryoga clenched his fist and shut his eyes, posing dramatically as he declared, "I got back to Japan a month ago... I've traveled the deep blue sea. It was already summertime in Okinawa when I returned. And then there were those weeks I was lost in the jungle... I thought I was going to die for sure!" His eyes snapped open and he stared at Ranma, fist still clenched. "Now! We're going to settle this! For good!"

By this point, Ryoga's dramatics had Ranma covering his face with his hand in exasperation. "I don't know what to tell ya, Ryoga..."

"You're damn right! You've got no right to say anything to me! Not after what you've done!" As he said this, Ryoga shrugged off his backpack and dropped it on the ground, grabbing his umbrella and unsheathing it from its position atop the pack.

"That's not what I meant, you idiot!" Ranma snapped back, waving his arms in protest.

"I've heard enough of your talking already!" Ryoga retorted, causing Ranma to double-facepalm at the failure to communicate. Flipping his umbrella around into his hand, he bellowed, "Fight!" and lunged at Ranma, jabbing and swinging the unlikely weapon like a sword.

By this point, all the betting was closed, freeing Nabiki up to watch the fight as well. She tried to stay confident as Ranma fell back on the defensive, dodging Ryoga's strikes with last-minute body-shifts, supercharged hops, and rapid ducks, reminding herself that Ranma had done the same thing with Kuno. ' _He's just putting on a show... like he did the last time. This guy Ryoga could never beat him back in junior high, he said so himself!'_ Nabiki told herself.

Funny... it wasn't actually as reassuring as she would have thought...

Oblivious to his fiancee's concerns, Ranma made a great leap to evade a scything horizontal strike from Ryoga's umbrella. "Could you at least tell me why we're fighting?" he pleaded.

"Shut up!" Ryoga denied him loudly, jumping up to catch Ranma and taking a vertical swipe at his foe with his umbrella - and missing by a mile, because he clearly didn't have the mid-air combat training that Ranma did.

Ranma hit the ground first, landing lightly on his feet. "Have it your way," he called back to Ryoga over his shoulder, an action deliberately chosen for its taunting value.

Having landed in a crouch, Ryoga let out a wordless cry of frustrated rage as he sprang up, whirled around and charged Ranma, who continued to toy with his old rival by refusing to strike back.

The two fighters dashed back and forth across the hardpacked earth, grunting and snarling as they battled, the audience watching in marvel at the speed of their movements - especially their attacks! Even Nabiki had to bite back a gasp when Ryoga stabbed at Ranma's heart with his umbrella, only for Ranma to slap it aside with a counter-strike at the very last moment.

Akane, meanwhile, was watching with conflicted emotions, awe and envy twisting and turning up inside her guts. At her sides, her good friends Yuka and Sayuri watched, the dark brunette covering her mouth and huddling up closer to Akane in fearful amazement, whilst the lighter brunette's forgotten ice-cream cone began to drip onto her wrist as she watched in amazement.

A sudden gentle nudge at her side drew Nabiki's attention away from the battle. "Hey, Nabiki? Final take is 11473 yen... looks like they all placed their bets on Ranma," Ryonami informed her.

"What? Nobody bet on Ryoga at all?" Nabiki asked, the question enough to overshadow her worry for Ranma's plight. "We were expecting Ranma to be the favorite, but... seriously?"

"Oh, there's a couple of people who bet on the new guy, but most of the big bets were on Ranma cleaning his clock," Ryonami explained.

"No surprise after watching him cream Kuno in every fight they had," Kikuko added, her eyes glued to the battle like everyone else's.

Nabiki sighed. "Well... we'll figure something out, ladies. We knew this was a possibility - that's why we made the odds what they were. We couldn't predict he'd seem like this sure of a bet."

Ryonami blinked incredulously; this was not like Nabiki at _all_. "But Nabiki, what if Ranma wins? We might be looking at being cleaned out, not just a low profit margin!"

"Then we'll eat the loss and we'll learn from it for the next time," Nabiki stated, in her firmest, iciest tone. "Betting on him is one thing, but I am **not** going to sabotage him!" she declared, her gaze boring into her underling like hot coals dropped onto ice.

"...You're the boss, Nabiki," Ryonami agreed, visibly wilting, not having _actually_ suggested sabotaging Ranma in particular, but not willing to push any further into hot water than she already was.

"Besides; would you like to go down into the thick of that?" Kikuko asked, pointing at the fray, and drawing Nabiki's attention back to her fiance.

As Ranma leapt back from a diagonal strike, Ryoga flipped his parasol open. "Take this, you coward!" he hollered almost frenetically, and flung it out, sending it skittering across the ground like a top.

Ranma stepped out of its way at the last second, and instinctively his gaze followed it as the umbrella hit where he had been and then bounced away in another direction... a fatal error! Quick as lightning, Ryoga whipped out something from inside his shirt and flung it at Ranma, who tried to deflect it with his forearm, only for it to latch on with a ringing metallic clink. Ranma stared at his wrist, momentarily dumbfounded as he tried to process what had happened, only to realize that a handcuff on the end of a long, thin cable had snapped shut around his wrist. He looked over at Ryoga, who smirked back and fastened the second cuff shut around his own wrist.

"These ought to prevent you from escaping me again, Ranma," Ryoga taunted him, his expression positively suffused with smug pride at having 'cornered' Ranma.

"How many times do I have to tell you that I didn't run away?!" Ranma shouted in frustration, his hands instinctively reaching up to tug on his hair in pure frustration.

In the time it took him to say those words, however, Ryoga had closed the distance between them; Ranma threw up his unchained arm to deflect Ryoga's punch, and then the two made simultaneous high-kicks at each other's heads, each deflecting the other with their wrist in a perfect cross-counter. Once more, Ryoga resumed his assault, punching with savage intensity at his rival. With the cable binding them to each other, Ranma's ability to evade was impeded, but he managed to keep Ryoga at arm's length.

On the sidelines, Nabiki licked suddenly dry lips. This was looking a lot more like an actual fight than any of Ranma's duels with Kuno had ever done. She couldn't take her eyes off of the brawling boys... at least, not until Ryonami nudged her ribs with her elbows and quietly asked her, "When is Ranma going to stop playing around and take him down?"

Kikuko cut off Nabiki's attempts to answer Ryonami when she suddenly interjected, "Are you so certain he's playing? Look at that!" she said, pointing over to the side, audibly nervous.

Nabiki followed Kikuko's outthrust pointer finger over to where her little sister was sitting. Ryoga's umbrella had come to rest lying on the ground over there, and her heart sank as she saw some of the boys from Ranma's class try and fail to lift Ryoga's umbrella. The sinking sensation only deepened as an inquisitive Akane gave it a try - and she too failed to pick it up. Only when she used both hands was she able to lift it from the ground, visibly straining to do so. And Nabiki knew that her sister was no slouch in the strength department - raw skill, maybe she fell behind Ranma, and arguably even Kuno, but in pure strength? She definitely outclassed her would-be beau. The memories of that crater in the front walkway of the school suddenly bubbled to the surface, and Nabiki swallowed, a stab of genuine fear piercing her heart.

"Ranma..." she whispered nervously, too worried about her fiance's safety to care for her reputation as "The Ice Queen" in that moment.

In the center of the field, oblivious to Nabiki's concerns, Ranma twisted his head out of the way of a thrusting fist from Ryoga - but not quickly enough. Whether it was the air pressure or Ryoga's thick, ragged thumbnail, he couldn't be sure, but he felt the familiar faint sting of skin splitting, a thin trickle of blood seeping down his cheek. Ryoga's triumphant smirk was the last straw for Ranma, who deliberately wiped his cheek clean and then licked the blood from his fingers. "That's it," he declared casually, snapping his tethered arm up to form a fist. "No more Mr. Nice Guy..."

From his own seat under a nearby tree, safely out of the way of the riff raff, Kuno smirked to himself. Kuno recognized that tone of Ranma's from his first ignominious encounter, and Kuno was looking forward to seeing his rival put this stranger in his place. Besides, it would be interesting to see just how far Ranma could _really_ push himself...

Ryoga, in comparison, simply scoffed. "Oh, so _now_ you get serious?" he jeered before letting out an outraged yell. "Don't make me laugh!", snapping out in another open-fingered punch at Ranma's face - only to go straight through it! Ranma's visage faded out of sight like it had never been there, and then...

It would take the martially adept who were present there several minutes to work it out in the aftermath that Ranma had ducked beneath Ryoga's thrust, leaping off the ground and somehow swinging his whole body through the gap between Ryoga's legs, going so fast that not only had he left an after-image, but he used the momentum to reach his feet up to Ryoga's shoulders, hooking onto them for leverage before contracting his legs and pulling his thighs into Ryoga's back with such force that he knocked Ryoga to his knees.

At the moment it happened, though, most would have blinked and then, somehow, Ranma would have been sitting on Ryoga's upper back, with the startled challenger forced to all fours on the ground below him.

From his perch, Ranma twisted around and smirked down at Ryoga over his shoulder. "So, Ryoga? What should I do with you know?" he jokingly asked.

Head pressed to the ground, Ryoga snarled toothily. "C-curse you, Saotome!" he spat, his anger rising to new heights as Ranma literally rubbed Ryoga's nose in his failure to pin down his rival.

"Looks like Ranma's got this in the bag after all," Ryonami added.

Nabiki nodded mutely, a faint smile playing on her lips as her heart lifted; she'd never felt so relieved to not be making money before.

But they'd counted Ryoga out too soon! Even Ranma was impressed when, with a roar of fury, Ryoga lifted his legs skyward, shifting into a one-armed handstand that had him almost perfectly vertical, even with Ranma still perched on his shoulders. Then, with another great shout of defiance, Ryoga thrust himself into the sky, a hand-spring leap that saw him and Ranma carried into the air several times higher than any man was tall!

As the audience gaped and marveled, Ranma and Ryoga came apart in mid-air. Ryoga tried to kick at Ranma twice as they turned through the air, but Ranma was far more adept at mid-air combat; he effortlessly evaded Ryoga's comparatively clumsy blows, and then shifted in close enough to deliver a powerful kick to Ryoga's ribcage. He plunged head-first to the ground, turning the descent to his advantage; he caught himself with just one hand, much like Ryoga had done before, and curled his legs. With a deft tug of his arm, he used Ryoga's own cable-cuffs against him, pulling the Eternally Lost Boy head-first into a position where he could mule-kick him squarely in the face.

Ryoga only just managed to forearms in position to block Ranma's kick, but it still hit him hard enough to send him flying back through the air. Once again, Ranma turned the cable to his advantage, letting it pull him along with Ryoga, then grabbing it and yanking on the cable in order to descend in a powerful diving kick that Ryoga, again, only just barely blocked. It still sent Ryoga crashing to his back on the ground - not too far from Akane, in fact. It was an impact that would have stunned many fighters, but Ryoga was made of sterner stuff. Spotting his umbrella, he dove across the ground for it, covering the distance in one mighty leap before scrambling to his feet.

Now it was Ryoga's turn to run; he fled for the fenceline, Ranma hot on his heels, and shot up; his first mighty leap wasn't enough to clear the fence entirely, but he kicked off of the metallic links and used that to propel himself further upwards, soaring over the top of the fence - and where he went, Ranma followed.

The excited audience quickly scrambled to follow as Ryoga bounded off, Ranma springing along behind him. But they couldn't keep up, because not only were the two fighters moving faster than the schoolkids could run, but they were bouncing around as erratically as drunken fleas as Ryoga's abysmal sense of direction manifested itself once again. This led to the students breaking up into various clusters as they tried to figure out which direction the fighters had gone...

"Hey! Ryoga! What's going on, you turn chicken? You forget, we're chained together, moron! Even you can't lose me!" Ranma called to his rival, not bothering to hide his contempt.

"Who're you calling chicken!?" Ryoga roared, whirling about to face Ranma. This time, Ranma met him strike for strike, whirling around the Eternally Lost Boy's own blows and delivering punishing punches and kicks to his slower, if tougher, opponent.

Now Ryoga found himself being driven back under Ranma's attacks, frustration and resentment boiling in his mind as they bounded back and forth around the school. Had Ranma been playing with him this whole time?! The thought burned in his guts like he'd swallowed hot coals. "Take this!" he shouted, trying to intercept a diving Ranma with a thrust from his trusty umbrella. The blow failed to catch his attacker, with Ranma's foot landing square on Ryoga's face, making him stagger back and flinch as the impact rattled his teeth... still, he did manage to take some satisfaction at the sound of fabric tearing; at least this time, Ranma hadn't come off clean!

As Ryoga opened his eyes and rubbed his aching nose, he took in the sight of Ranma, who was staring down at the long, diagonal cut across his shirt with dismay. "Hey! You just wrecked my favorite shirt, Ryoga!" he complained.

Ryoga smirked, enjoying the sight of Ranma's dismay. "This is a duel, you coward! Don't you start talking like a girl!" he mocked him.

Had Nabiki been present, she would have made a pithy comment about Ryoga touching the Jusenkyo button. But she wasn't present at the moment, so the only sign Ryoga had of the mistake he made was the icy glint in Ranma's eyes as he scowled darkly at his former classmate.

"Who're you calling a girl?! I'm a guy!" he roared, with a vehemence that took Ryoga more than a little aback, to say the least, and then launched himself at Ryoga so quickly that Ryoga barely managed to block Ranma's kick in time - and it still landed with enough force to send Ryoga flying backwards with such velocity that he felt the cable pull taut - and then snap!

Ryoga dug his heels in, skidding to a stop, but then looked at Ranma with shock - when did Ranma get that strong?! Had he really underestimated him so much? But he didn't have long to contemplate it, because Ranma was still coming after him with what looked like murder in his eye.

"Ryoga! You take that back!" Ranma shouted, leaping towards his foe. Ryoga sprang away to the side to try and get some distance, but Ranma would not be denied. "Take it back I said!" Ranma bellowed, launching a diving kick at his foe - who jumped away at the last moment, leaving Ranma on a collision course with one of the school's drinking fountains!

* * *

"Nabiki, look, over there!" Kikuko said, pointing to the sudden geyser spraying high into the air.

"That's Ranma alright - come on ladies, double-time it!" Nabiki said, already to catch up with her errant fiance. Ranma and cold water... talk about mixing oil and fire!

* * *

With amazing grace, Ryoga wielded his umbrella like a shield, keeping the spray of the broken fountain from touching him as he dropped back down to earth. A huddled human form suddenly leapt out of the gushing waters, shooting past him, and he automatically followed it with his gaze as they both touched down on the ground, spinning to face... Ranma?!

"Come on an' fight, Ryoga!" the figure snapped, arms up in a classic attack pattern.

But Ryoga could only stare; this new figure was a woman! And there was no denying that - even if her soaking wet shirt wasn't clinging to every curve like its life depended on it, a great rip in her shirt had her nipples and underboobs exposed for all the world to see. "W-who-who the heck are you?" he gasped feebly.

In answer, she simply leapt at him! "Shut up an' fight me!" She shrieked, then delivered a snap-kick straight across Ryoga's face, using the momentum to flip herself backwards to land on her feet in a fighting posture.

Instinctively, Ryoga pressed a clenched fist to his bruised lip, staring at the... stranger? ...incredulously. "Ranma? Is it you?" he gawked.

"Just who did ya think it was, ya stupid jerk?!" she snarled.

And that was when Nabiki and her henchwomen arrived. "Ranma! Your blouse!" Nabiki called out.

Ranma glanced down instinctively, then let out a startled noise of shock and hastily covered the rip in her shirt, blushing as she did. It was one thing to let Nabiki see her in this state, but that didn't mean she wanted to be flashing the whole school!

"Ranma? You're..." Ryoga began, uncertain himself of what he actually wanted to say.

The aquatransexual visibly wilted, her rage guttering out and replaced with sorrow. "Go ahead an' make fun of me, Ryoga. I got no idea why you hate me so much! I just... I'm just... I'm just... **I'm just trying to get by!** " she finally cried out. "It's not easy having this curse for a body, y'know!" she spat, audibly disgusted with herself.

Ryoga scowled. He was about to tell this... this... girl-Ranma exactly what he thought of that, when the brunette girl with the pageboy haircut suddenly interjected.

"I know why you're going to hate him, Ranma. We have to declare Ryoga the winner of the match," she said.

"WHAT?!" both combatants roared, turning outraged expressions on Nabiki.

She just looked back at them coolly. "The rest of the school saw your little watershow and is on their way here. We can't tell them that the match is still on unless we out your little problem to the whole school, Ranma. So what's more important; your pride as a fighter, or your pride in your manhood?" she asked.

Ryoga stared between the two girls. Ranma looked visibly wounded - more than he'd ever seen the boy - girl - whatever! She was biting her lip and glaring at Nabiki, who simply gave her a cool look in response. But as more and more students came running up, noisily chattering about whatever unimportant things were on their minds, Ranma finally made her mind up. Clenching her shirt closed with her hands, she turned and ran away as fast as she could.

...Strange, Ryoga could have sworn he saw a glint of a tear on her cheek, though.

But all he could do was stand and watch her fleeing form, tasting ash in his mouth. Despite what Nabiki began assuring the students gawking at him, this was no victory... and he was not going to let it end like this...

* * *

Late that night, at the Tendo Dojo...

* * *

The susurrus of gentle yet persistent rain filled the air; it was late at night, when all normal people were tucked up in their beds. But not Ryoga Hibiki. No, he had a mission to complete...

His memories still burned with the indignation of that afternoon, of having his rightful victory cheated out of him by that strange girl - Nabiki Tendo, that was her name - and Ranma's own sense of modesty. Oh, how it had rankled to see Ranma running away from their man-to-man fight, just so he wouldn't have to reveal to his idiot schoolmates that he turned into a girl when splashed with cold water! But Ryoga had no intent of choking on his false victory.

He might not be good at following directions, but he could follow people. He'd stalked Nabiki ever since she'd finished dealing up with the betting ring she had apparently been running on his and Ranma's fight - obviously, she'd made Ranma run off so she could make a profit, because most of the fools at Furinkan had been betting on Ryoga's hated rival. She'd led him all over town all afternoon, and more than once, he'd wondered if she was somehow aware of his stalking her. But no; she was just a stupid girl doing stupid girl things.

But it still meant that it was dinner time when they'd arrived at the Tendo Dojo. Ryoga had waited down the block, watching patiently; he'd thought about just charging up and demanding that Ranma finish the fight at last, but he was smarter than that. No more interference or audiences; this time it would be just him and Ranma.

Puddles splashed beneath his feet as he prowled down the street to the Tendo Dojo's gates. Clutching a pair of walnuts left over from his meager dinner, he scowled to himself. "Finally! Oh, the horrors I've had to endure to get here...but tonight is when my suffering ends! Ranma Saotome... today is the day you go to your final reward!" he vowed, crushing the walnuts with one mighty squeeze of his fist… before picking out the meat and eating it because food was food.

Thus fortified, and quiet as a ninja, he sprang over the gate and landed on the house's front walkway. With a stealthiness that would have legitimately impressed Ranma, Ryoga slipped quietly into the house, heading straight up the stairs and hoping that this would lead him to Ranma's room. Passing by western-style doors adorned with nameplates, he reached a room with a more traditional sliding door, and slid it open.

For once, fortune was with him! His dark-adjusted eyes meant that he could clearly see the form of Ranma, sprawled out upon a futon. And also, weirdly, a massive panda snoring softly from a second futon next to his. In fact, he was sure he recognized it as the panda that had been sweeping outside of that chiropractor's last week... had Ranma traded his father for a pet panda or something? Not a bad bargain, he had to admit; something about Genma had always put his hackles up as a kid...

Ryoga stopped and shook his head fiercely; what was he doing?! He'd come here for a reason! He slunk over to the head of Ranma's futon, where he whispered, "Wake up! Ranma, it's me - let's fight!"

Ranma didn't even stir in his sleep. Irked at being 'ignored', Ryoga tried again. "Come on! Wake up already!" he hissed, raising the volume of his voice to try and get through to his slumbering foe.

Again, all he was greeted with was some soft snoring. Now truly perturbed, Ryoga crouched down and drew back his fist. "Wake UP!" he snapped , barely managing to keep his voice even remotely down as he tried to punch Ranma in the head.

Except that Ranma somehow chose that moment to roll over to the side, so all Ryoga achieved was putting his fist through the pillow and into the floor. Glaring at Ranma, Ryoga tried another punch - and this time Ranma rolled back the other way at the last moment!

' _What the hell... how can anyone dodge in their sleep like that?'_ Ryoga wondered to himself, incredulity momentarily edging aside his rage. But only for the moment. His ire renewed once more Ryoga leaned over Ranma and shouted at the top of his lungs, "Wake up, stupid!"

...Ranma didn't even blink. Had it been in an anime, Ryoga would have laughed at it, but as it was happening to him, it most certainly wasn't funny!

"Rrrowrr!" Came a deep rumbling groan from behind Ryoga. He glanced over to the side at the panda, which was now sitting upright in its futon and plainly glaring at Ryoga, who glowered back in wordless challenge.

The panda rose to its hindlegs and waddled over to the window, delicately sliding it open... then, before Ryoga could realize what was happening, it charged at him, snatching up Ryoga and Ranma alike before bodily throwing them out through the window! Ryoga managed to whip his umbrella into a defensive position, shielding himself from the rain and using it like a parachute to gently glide back down to earth, whilst Ranma sailed inelegantly through the air and landed in the pond with a splash.

Seconds ticked past as Ryoga rose to his feet, eyes fixed on the pond, and he felt the glimmerings of a morbid fascination for Ranma as his hated foe failed to surface. How could anyone sleep through that?! But finally, the surface of the water parted as Ranma - now in the form of the buxom redhead from that afternoon, sat up and coughed out water.

And then she spotted Ryoga, and quickly scrambled to her feet. "Ryoga? What the heck are you doing here in the middle of the night?" she asked drowsily, and the genuinely curious tone of her voice only made Ryoga more furious.

"You shut up! Does revenge know night or day?" Ryoga asked, indulging his dramatic side if only to regain some mental equilibrium after _being tossed out the window by a panda_. Ye gods; did Ranma just attract the concept of 'random' or something?

Ranma waded through the pool and stepped onto the muddy grass. "This has gone too far! What could I have possibly done to make you so mad?" she demanded flatly, staring fixedly at Ryoga and making it clear to the Lost Boy no fight would be forthcoming without an explanation preceding it.

Having heard that same question time and time again, Ryoga reluctantly conceded that maybe his hated foe legitimately didn't know. So, he decided to educate her before he beat her within an inch of her life. "Listen! These may be your last moments on this earth!" he proclaimed - a lightning bolt flashing across the sky with perfect dramatic timing.

"After you skipped out on our duel, I followed you all the way to China!" he spat, with yet another perfectly timed thunderbolt accentuating his words.

 _Boy, the weather here sure is convenient_ Ryoga noted to himself.

With the rain pouring down and his soaked shirt clinging to him like a second skin, accentuating the jiggling orbs weighing on his chest, it took Ranma barely an instant to realize what Ryoga was insinuating. On any other day, he probably would have sympathized with Ryoga, even tried to commiserate with somebody that he had always considered a friend. But on this day, he was still sore from their duel earlier, when he had been forced to experience the humiliation of retreating with his proverbial tail between his legs in order to not reveal his gender-bending status to his classroom.

So, instead, Ranma laughed loudly. "You went to Jusenkyo! Oh, man, only you could be that dumb, Ryoga!" the aquatransexual cackled. "I bet you dove into one of the springs on purpose, thinking it was just a place to wash off!" the boy-turned-girl jeered.

"Shut up!" Ryoga roared, eyes bulging with fury. "Don't you dare laugh at me, Ranma! You might have been lucky enough to walk away with a gorgeous body like that, but my life has been ruined because of you!" And with that, he charged Ranma, clearly in no mood for further talk... which was fine by Ranma; she was ripe and ready to take out her spleen on Ryoga as well by this point.

Unlike at Furinkan, this time, both combatants were on the offensive. Punches, kicks and other strikes flowed fluidly, interspersed with dodges, blocks and counters. Ranma leapt aside as Ryoga's kick shattered a stone ornament (she idly wondered what it was, suspecting a bird-feeder, but then wrote it off as unimportant) into pieces with an almighty clattering of crumbling stone. Even though Ryoga was handicapped by his need to keep the rain off with his umbrella, Ranma was similarly held back by the limitations of an unfamiliar body - besides, she had too much pride to try and take advantage of Ryoga's curse by attacking his umbrella... at least, for the moment.

Thunder cracked above their heads, lightning piercing the rain to provide brief flashes of illumination. Only two fighters as skilled as they could have so easily coped with the extreme environment and its constant impediments - slippery grass and unstable mud underfoot, disorientating thunder and lightning strobe-lighting the vision-straining darkness, the hiss of rain in the ear clouding their hearing and making it harder for each to pinpoint where the other was. All conspiring but failing to interrupt the rivals in their duel. Grunts and battle cries fell from their lips as they clashed, the tide of battle ebbing and flowing without cease.

It was the first real fight Ranma had actually been able to have since he'd arrived in Nerima, and privately, she was loving it - there was only so far she could push herself with just her father and his intermittent sparring sessions, after all.

...So of _course_ they were suddenly interrupted when something came whizzing through the air... and caught Ryoga right in the back of the head as he was leaping in to attack Ranma. It knocked him flying sideways - Ranma thought it looked like a set of hand-weights, but couldn't be sure in the dark and rain- which caused Ryoga to lose grip on his umbrella.

The Eternally Lost Boy wrapped his arms in front of his face, an instinctive effort to deny the inevitable, but in vain; grunting in dismay, he sprang away, leaping over the boundary wall and then vanishing behind it.

"Ryoga!" Ranma called out - not entirely sure herself if she was bothered at the fight being interrupted or by something else that was hard to place. She thought she heard Kasumi's voice from behind her, but Ranma was already in motion, bounding over the wall in hot pursuit. She picked a street at random and sprinted down it, calling Ryoga's name - but all Ranma found was Ryoga's clothing, sprawled empty across the sodden pavement.

"Wow, he really did take the plunge... poor slob," Ranma muttered, the fight having purged enough of her rage to let her nicer side rear its head back up. "But why're his clothes all here? Looks like he must have shrunk right out of them... huh, he was ranting about my curse making me 'lucky'. What could he turn into?" the aquatransexual murmured, idly picking through Ryoga's clothes and confirming that, yes, he had left everything behind... the redhead cringed at having almost touched a certain undergarment.

A sudden growling from behind her made Ranma spin around. From an alley behind her, a dog emerged, eyes glowing like witchfire in the dark, teeth bared as it growled at her, coat bristling in rage.

"Ryoga..." Ranma breathed softly, her face gaining a tinge of sympathy. "Easy now, Ryoga; I didn't come here to fight, okay? I want to help you, I promise," she assured her transformed rival, calling on all of her fairly considerable experience in dog-whispering to try and soothe the formerly human canine.

The dog continued to growl for a minute or two, but then slowly calmed down, padding cautiously over to Ranma. Who had to resist the urge to scratch it behind the ears by reminding herself that this was Ryoga... but it was so hard; Ranma liked dogs, at least when they wanted to be friends with him too.

She gently extended her hand, and the transformed Ryoga hesitantly sniffed it before giving it a lick, bringing a smile to Ranma's lips. "That's a good boy... come on, Ryoga, we'll get you in where it's dry and change you back, okay?"

Taking the lack of any protests as a good sign, Ranma bundled up Ryoga's clothes, slung his pack over her shoulder, then took the dog by its collar - why did Ryoga even have one of those? She hadn't seen it on him when he was human - and led it back to the Tendo Dojo.

Once there, she left Ryoga's belongings in the genkan - along with Ryoga the dog himself - and hurried to put a kettle on to boil, grabbing a towel and some old newspaper before going back and getting Ryoga. Who was obviously much calmer now, since he actually waited for her to get back and lead him into the living room, where she sat him on the newspaper to try and keep the wet fur off of the floor.

Ranma sat down unceremoniously next to her old rival, sitting flat on her rump with her legs sprawled out under the chabudai as she tried to dry the worst of the rain from her hair. "I feel bad for you Ryoga, really, I do," she assured the dog. "But you gotta stop attacking me in the middle of the night! I'm only a guest here, it's rude to wake up the others for fights like ours!" she scolded him.

"Where'd that dog come from? What happened to Ryoga?" came a feminine voice from behind Ranma, making her spin around to face Akane, who'd just walked into the room.

Normally, Ranma would have replied to her, but her attention was a little distracted by the strange black creature tucked up in the youngest Tendo's arms. "Hey, where'd you get the weird-looking pig?" she asked, pointing at it for emphasis.

The little oinker squealed at Ranma's words and began to writhe and struggle in Akane's arms - almost angrily, but no, that was impossible. Akane shushed it gently and spun it around to face her, cuddling it like a child as she gently said, "Be a good piggy now; we'll get some nice medicine and put it on your booboos," she assured it as she petted its back.

Ranma watched as it nuzzled into Akane's bosom, piggish forelimbs wrapped around the youngest Tendo's comparatively sizable breasts, tilting her head quizzically. "Hey, I think it's blushing!" she pointed out in amazement.

"Don't be stupid," Akane dryly shot back, snuggling the pig in harder in response to the outlandish idea Ranma had. Even if he wasn't _all_ bad, he was still evidently a thick **boy** still

Curiosity piqued, Ranma stood up and plucked the piglet from Akane's arms, spinning it around to face her. "You dirty little pig," she teased it. "Hah! It's a he!" she chortled as she made up a very distinctive set of organs on its lower torso. When Akane stepped around to her side, clearly unable to resist her curiosity, Ranma adjusted her grip to give Akane a better view, making the youngest Tendo clasp her hands over her mouth in a vain attempt to hide her grin as she giggled, "You're right!"

The pig squealed in what was unmistakable indignation at this treatment, fighting its way out of Ranma's grasp and lunging at her face. Caught off-guard, Ranma squalled in turn as its sharp little hooves painfully scratched at her face - only when Akane snatched it up and hugged it back to her bosom did it relent in its assault.

Ranma cast a sour look at the pig, but refrained from pummeling it in retaliation - she didn't really feel like getting into a fight with Akane.

A minute or two later, Akane was gently rubbing a large bump on the back of the pig's head with a cotton ball soaked in iodine. As she did that, she glanced over at the dog sitting next to Ranma. "Come to think of it, Ranma, I know I've seen that dog before," she remarked.

"You... have, huh?" Ranma repeated warily. She glanced over at the dog, considered her options, and made her decision. ' _Don't worry, Ryoga; I'll keep your secret. It's the warrior's code, right?'_ she thought to herself. ' _It's funny, though; even as a dog, you still look like Ryoga. Those bloodshot eyes are a dead giveaway...'_ she mused.

"Ah! Now I remember!" Akane suddenly spoke up, making Ranma start a bit. "That's the Yamatas' dog, Bess!"

"It's who?" Ranma blurted out, gaze snapping over to Akane, now thoroughly bamboozled.

"Yeah, I dogsat for them once... here Bess!" she chirped, holding out a hand palm-side up.

The dog promptly let out a happy little bark and immediately put its paw in her palm, tail wagging.

' _...The hell?'_ Ranma thought to herself, staring at the sight. "Excuse me a moment," she said, and then quickly went to the kitchen to retrieve the now-hot kettle. Back in the living room, she put her hand on Akane's head and forcibly turned her gaze away from the dog, saying, "Look away for a sec, will ya?" as she did so. Ignoring Akane's obvious bemusement, she promptly poured the kettle on the dog... and wound up with nothing more than a very confused canine, which promptly shook itself dry.

Ranma blinked in surprise. "Well... that's odd," she finally conceded. "And here I thought... ah well," she mused to herself, starting to head out of the living room.

"Where are you going?" Akane asked, rising up to partially follow her.

"To take a hot bath. All that running around in the rain practically froze me half to death," Ranma explained, pointing out to the still downpouring storm.

At that moment, the pig in Akane's arms sneezed, and she giggled at the adorable sound. "Well, then can you take him with you?" she asked Ranma politely.

"Take a bath with a pig?" Ranma repeated in a dubious tone, not exactly thrilled by the prospect. Had she paid attention, she would have seen the pig likewise frantically shaking its own head.

Akane simply smiled and held the pig out insistently. "Take him," she entreated complete with batting eyelashes for 'dramatic effect' , and Ranma reluctantly conceded; she and Akane weren't fighting like they had been during his first week at the Tendo house, but she still wouldn't say that they liked each other, and thusly getting further in her someday sister-in-law's good books wasn't to be sniffed at.

The pig was not pleased with the decision, but frankly, Ranma was well and truly past caring what the animal thought, especially given her face was still stinging from hooves being raked like claws over her tender skin.

Once Ranma reached the bathroom, she pinned the squirming piglet under her foot and began shucking off her clothes, wondering to herself as she did, "So... if he's not the dog... then where did that idiot Ryoga run off to?"

As she filled the bath with hot water, the pig only fought all the harder, forcing Ranma to really struggle to hold onto it. "Hey, settle down already! A bath's not gonna kill ya," she told the squirming, threshing, squealing animal. Finally, the tub was sufficiently full that she grabbed it and bodily submerged it into the water...

...And then, moments later, the head and torso of a naked and very angry human youth emerged from the steamy water, brown eyes glaring straight into Ranma's own shocked-wided blue ones.

"R...Ryoga?" she gasped, jaw at full extension.

Ryoga just glowered back. The two stared at each other, Ranma trying to put her reaction into words, but completely failing. Neither of them really noticing or caring that they were sans clothing

"Ranma? Make sure you wash him all over. Especially behind the ears," Akane called from the doorway into the bathroom.

It was such a contextually incongruous request... but it at least managed to jolt Ranma back into her senses enough to hesitantly ask, "So then... you're the... pig?"

"You're dead!" Ryoga snapped back almost redundantly, lashing out with a punch that Ranma only prevented from hitting her in the face by hastily interposing a wash-bucket.

"Wait!" She pleaded; with her ire gone, Ranma's desire for context returned all the stronger. "How'd this happen to you, Ryoga?! Why in the world would you go anywhere near a place like Jusenkyo? Talk to me!"

Visibly seething, Ryoga spat out, "I've endured unbearable torments chasing after you! China's a big place, but it's even bigger when you're crossing it on foot! Mile after mile after mile..."

Ranma chose not to point out that she'd hiked across China on foot herself, since in fairness Ryoga would have wandered a lot further than she had due to his bad sense of direction.

"I don't know how long I wandered... months, maybe? I chased after every rumor and story I could that seemed to point the way to you and your father. And then, one fateful day, I found myself on a cliff overlooking a valley full of springs... when this huge panda comes barreling out of the underbrush and charging right at me! I leapt to avoid it... and that's when this crazy girl in a gi comes leaping through the air, screaming at the panda!"

Ryoga was gritting his teeth so hard that Ranma found herself morbidly fascinated by the notion of whether or not they could take the pressure...or if they'd shatter in his mouth "That stupid girl smacked right into me and swatted me back down to earth! I hit the ground so hard, the cliff-face broke under my hand and I lost my balance, tumbling over the edge and into one of the springs down below... And then... that's when I.. that's when I realized that... I'd been cast into hell!"

Ranma would have sworn Ryoga's eyes were literally burning red at that moment.

"I don't know how, but I'd gone into that pool a man, and reached the surface as a pig! I had no idea what was going on - I could barely control my body - and I floundered in that pool for what felt like an hour before the panda from before returned. He pulled me from the spring... and then carried me to this Chinese man, who set about getting ready to cook me as sweet 'n' sour pork!" Ryoga shuddered in a mixture of fury and terror at the memory of almost being turned into a popular gaijin side dish before continuing his none-too-quiet rant. "He was going on all the time about how there was a Spring of Drowned Pig - Eiton'niichuan - formed when a pig drowned at Jusenkyo 1200 years ago, even as he sharpened up this great big cleaver..."

Ryoga visibly shivered in terror at the memory before collecting himself once again. "He actually looked me in the eye and wondered if maybe I'd fallen into Eiton'iichuan - and then he laughed it off as a joke before he dropped me into a huge pot full of boiling hot water!"

It would later strike Ranma that if the Jusenkyo guide's first action had been to give Ryoga a super-heated bath instead of just cutting his throat, then that meant the guide had probably suspected Ryoga could be something more than met the eye. But at the moment, she was too caught up in Ryoga's tale to point it out, and to be fair Ryoga probably wouldn't care either.

The stricken boy shook his head, visibly trying to expel the memories. "My god! If the hot water hadn't changed me back, they'd have had me for dinner!" he gasped. Then he glared at Ranma once again, snarling bitterly, "This is all your fault, Ranma! If only you'd shown up to take your beating like a man..."

"Now wait just a minute, Ryoga!" Ranma snapped back at him, his sympathy evaporating like hot bourbon at the renewed accusation. "How is any of this even remotely my fault?! You're the one who decided to chase after me to China over some dumb bread feud! It's not like I was the one who knocked you into Eiton'niichuan! You just said so yourself, it was some panda and a girl..."

The boy-turned trailed off as his words stirred his memory. A panda and a girl? On the cliffs over Jusenkyo? Oh... oh, no, no-no-no! Ryoga couldn't be right to blame this on him! He remembered chasing Pops' fuzzy butt all over Jusenkyo for an hour, with vague plans of dragging him back and throwing him in the Nyanniichuan, but he swore he didn't remember running into Ryoga there!

But... he'd been so enraged, literally blind with fury... was it really possible? Oh, kami-damn them all to the deepest hells... He was so screwed if Ryoga figured out that Ranma really had been the one to knock him into Eiton'niichuan!

...And of course, the universe chose that moment to stick another fork in Ranma's heart. The door slid open and Genma walked in, still in his panda form. He took one long look at the sight - his naked son-turned-daughter on all fours next to the bath, a naked boy in the bath - then held up a sign with "pardon me!" scrawled on it in his messy handwriting and walked straight back out again.

"That panda again... what are you even doing with a... panda?!" Ryoga's tone changed from curiously conversational to suspicion as he looked back and forth between the door and Ranma. Ranma flinched back, smiling weakly and instinctively trying to look cute as the ceramic tiles under Ryoga's fingers cracked and splintered. "It was you! You're the one who knocked me in!" Ryoga screamed in unholy ire, his voice actually cracking with how harshly he shrieked. "I'm gonna kill you!"

Ranma yelped in panic, instinctively scrabbling across the floor to the shower and grabbing for the water tap as Ryoga leapt from the bath. She felt his hand close around her pigtail and painfully yank her head back, making her cry out, "Wait a minute! Listen!" she pleaded, babbling as she managed to fight through the pain, grab the cold water tap, and twist it on full-bore, sending cold water cascading down over the pair of them from the spray-tap mounted above them.

"What? Ah, that's cold! No fair Ranma!" Ryoga shouted - but it was too late for him to escape.

Ranma felt the fingers disappear from around her pigtail, replaced by a weird weight upon her rump. She turned around, and saw Ryoga the pig perched on her butt with a look of high-dudgeon on his porcine snoot, and smiled weakly at him. "We'll, ah, talk a little bit later, okay? After you've cooled down, of course. 'kay, Ryoga?" she meekly assured him.

The pig simply snarled, growling as fiercely as little porcine vocal cords would allow it, and then it leapt at Ranma's face!

Once more, Ranma went tumbling to the floor... but this time, there was no misplaced sense of mercy holding back Ranma's reciprocal wrath. The boy-turned-girl tore the boy-turned-pig from her face and hurled it across the bathroom, and then sprang to attack in kind!

Meanwhile, Akane was sitting in the living room, waiting for Ranma to wash the pig and bring it back to her. She'd always wanted a pet, and although it had been aggressive initially when it snuck into her room, she could tell that it liked her too with how quickly it'd calmed down. And then she heard the sound of running feet, cursing and desperate porcine squeals. "What are those two doing?!" she asked, sticking her head out into the hall.

And then her new pet pig came running for its life down the hall, with Ranma in hot pursuit. "Come back here, ya little runt! Do you think yer the only one that's suffering!?" Ranma snarled, flinging a bathing bucket at the pig with such accuracy that it bounced off the back of its head with an audible crack, making the pig whirl around to face the aquatransexual at Akane's side. "You scratched me, you little beast! You ruined my perfect complexion!" Ranma snapped at the pig.

When Nabiki heard about that line later and asked for the story, Ranma would explain that it was a matter of principle; yes, he hated turning into a girl, but if he had to do so, then he should at least look good!

Akane, understandably given her limited perspective of what was going on, was horrified. "Ranma! What do you think you're doing?" she shrieked in righteous outrage. What did her sister's twisted fiance think he - er, she was doing, abusing her pet-to-be like that?!

"Oh, you little coward! Look at you; hiding behind Akane!" Ranma snapped in return - completely ignoring Akane to instead berate the pig.

"Ranma!" Akane scolded her again, before a strange growling made her glance down. Dumbfounded, she watched as the pig hunkered down on all fours, growling at Ranma, before suddenly launching itself at the boy-turned-girl like a teeny pork missile!

Much as it had done when she'd first met it, the pig bounced off of the walls, floor and ceiling, moving like a high-speed pinball, trying to tackle Ranma before she could react. In fact, Akane was actually almost impressed at how well the pig was doing, getting in several strikes that even the vaunted Ranma couldn't block. But her pride changed to horror as Ranma suddenly snatched it out of the air.

"Little runt!" Ranma snarled, then slammed the pig face-first into the floor, much to Akane's horror.

"Stop it!" she cried, charging forward and using a move her father had made her promise to only use when she had to; she grabbed one of Ranma's breasts in her hand and squeezed it as hard as she could. The results were immediate and quite gratifying, as Ranma let out a shriek of what almost sounded like legitimate pain before collapsing limp on the floor. Ignoring Ranma, Akane instead scooped up the bruised piglet, which was visibly weeping after its rough handling by Ranma. "Oh, poor thing... look how scared you are," Akane murmured, as much to herself as to the piglet. Hugging it to her breast, she petted its head as she stood up. "Come on, baby, let's go," she said.

"Just hold it! Where are you taking him?" Ranma shouted, springing up off the floor to interrupt her.

"We're going to bed," Akane snapped firmly, glowering at Ranma and enjoying the stab of dark delight at the way his-her breast was already visibly bruising from her attack of before.

"But you can't!" Ranma protested.

"Just watch me," Akane spat back. "I have nothing to say to an animal abuser like you!" she scowled, then turned her back on the boy-turned girl firmly. "Don't worry baby; I won't leave you with that nasty Ranma," she assured her new pet. "Be a good boy and stop crying, okay?" she asked, and gave it a sweet little kiss on the nose.

Much to her delight, that settled him right down, and she happily skipped off back to her bedroom, leaving a very gobsmacked Ranma in her wake.

"...Unbelievable. And pops calls me stubborn!" she finally said. She was sorely tempted to just let Akane keep the pig - especially after the titty-twister she'd just been given. But... and here she sighed; it wouldn't be fair to Nabiki to leave her little sister vulnerable to Ryoga creeping on her like that. So she'd have to do something. And if Akane wouldn't listen to reason... well, there were ways to work around that.

A short time later, Ryoga was in heaven, lying in a warm, clean bed with the arms of a cute girl wrapped around him lovingly as she slept beside him. True, she thought he was a pet, but still, she'd kissed him! And she seemed to hate Ranma almost as much as he did, too! Yes, for once in his life, things were starting to look up...

Ryoga was just closing his eyes and allowing himself to drift off to sleep, visions of taking the sweet Akane Tendo out on a date after he'd stomped Ranma's face into the mud filling his mind, when he heard the sound of wind whistling through an open window, making the drapes flutter. He stirred from his sleep and looked towards the window - and what he saw made his blood freeze. Ranma Saotome had invaded Akane's room, perching in the window above her desk with a kettle clutched in one hand.

He sprang up onto all fours, growling, but Ranma simply brandished the kettle at him, which audibly sloshed as he shook it. "Unless you want me to blow your cover, be quiet, pig!" Ranma snapped in a whisper.

Reluctantly, Ryoga went still, and Ranma smirked. "That's a good piggy," he jeered, before putting the kettle down and reaching out to slowly ease Ryoga away from the bed by his bandanna...

Which was when Akane suddenly reached out in her sleep and snatched him away, pulling him into a tight embrace.

The two Jusenkyo-cursed boys blinked in mutual incredulity, and Ryoga wondered for a second if this would make Ranma give it up. Instead, Ranma tensed like a spring, and then snatched Ryoga out of Akane's arms too quickly for the sleeping girl to register. A pity for him that Ryoga had no intention of coming along quietly; he promptly sank his piggy teeth as deep into Ranma's hand as he could.

Ranma stiffed, clapping a hand over his mouth to muffle his cry of pain, and then hurled Ryoga bodily into a wall. But the Eternally Lost Boy (well, Pig) recovered in an instant and sprang at Ranma, once more turning himself into a bouncing bacony bullet.

To an outsider, it would have been quite a comical affair as the two hopped all over Akane's bedroom like drunken fleas... right up until Ranma caught his foot on a hand-weight that Akane had left carelessly lying on the floor. He whirled out his arms, trying to catch his balance...but Ryoga was already flying at his rival's head, and the impact caused Ranma to fall face first into Akane's bed, arm dropping heavily over Akane's shoulders.

Naturally, this woke up Akane... who was less than happy when her vision cleared and she realized Ranma was lying over her. "Ranma..." she growled.

Ranma sprang back as if he was lying face-down on a hot griddle. "No, wait! Akane, I'm sorry, it's not what you think!" he protested.

Akane simply slapped him across the face so hard that he tumbled to the floor. Then she leapt out of bed and grabbed her trusty shinai before she began to beat him savagely with it.

"No! Wait! You! It's him! It's Ryoga!" Ranma managed to blurt out, trying to speak through Akane's angry cries and his own exclamations of pain as the bundled bamboo rods painfully cracked against his back, shoulders and scalp.

" **Where**?! Where is Ryoga?!" Akane growled, face burning red with rage. "I don't see any Ryoga, I only see **you** , you _**animal**_!" she screamed, before picking him up and throwing him bodily through the closed window, sending him screaming through the air to a head-first crash landing against one of the boulders in the garden below. She stared out through the broken window, fists clenched and shoulders shaking in fury, before she pointedly turned her back on him. "He won't get away with this!" she screamed. "He won't, he **won't**!"

* * *

The next morning...

* * *

"What are you going to do about this, dad?! He was in my room in the middle of the night!" Akane screamed in fury.

"I... uh... I'm sure he must have had a good reason, Akane," Soun weakly protested, before glaring at Genma... who had the audacity to try and look innocent in the way only a panda could.

"What possible reason could there be? He's just a pervert! And you married him to my sister!" Akane snapped at her father, who was forcefully reminded of his wife's own ability to reach a truly towering rage when provoked.

"Yes, and he's never done anything remotely like this to her, now has he?" Soun desperately threw back, casting a hopeful look at Nabiki for backup.

"Daddy's... not wrong, Akane," the middle Tendo daughter slowly conceded. Ranma had never been anything but a gentleman with her. So... why was he breaking into Akane's room in the middle of the night? She glanced over at where Ranma would normally have been sitting, but this morning, there hadn't been a single sign of him - which Akane had vocally attributed to her driving him off the night before.

It just didn't make any sense to Nabiki... except, on a certain level, it did. Akane had always been the more attractive sister, and she and Ranma had basically had their first fight yesterday. When she'd come home after handling all the bets on the fight, Ranma had wanted nothing to do with her - he'd even deliberately sat away from her at dinner that night. It had been... surprisingly painful to see him putting such distance between them. And though she tried to deny it, she couldn't help but wonder if maybe Ranma wasn't changing his mind about which Tendo he wanted to marry...

She shook her head, trying to banish the thoughts, and pushed away her breakfast plate. "I have to get to school," she announced, cutting through... whatever stupid argument that her sister and her father were having. Before they could protest, she was out of the room, grabbing her schoolbag from where she'd left it in readiness for today and heading for the street.

She hit the pavement at a fair pace; not running, definitely not, but... a brisk power walk. Yes, that she would accept. On pure autopilot, she maneuvered around traffic and people, instinctively heading to Furinkan High School.

"Nabiki! Hey, Nabiki, wait up!" came a sudden voice - a familiar, masculine voice, that cut through the haze that had clouded her thoughts and brought her to a screeching halt.

She looked around, but she couldn't see the source at first, until he leapt down from whatever high perch he'd been using. "Oh. What is it, Ranma?"

He visibly flinched. "I... um... about last night..."

"Don't tell me; I can guess. You wanted to see if Akane would want to switch the engagement, right?" Nabiki replied bitterly, unable to hold back the doubts and hurt that had been weighing on her all morning.

Ranma looked visibly startled. "What?! Where in the world did you hear a crazy thing like that?!" he asked, back to being confused as he seemed to so frequently be lately.

"It doesn't take a genius to figure out why you'd be sneaking into my little sister's room after we had a fight," Nabiki dryly explained, keeping her face turned away so Ranma wouldn't be able to use his puppy eyes at her. "I didn't think you'd be that sore over my betting ring on the side..."

"What fight?!" Ranma snapped, looking totally lost. "Who's sore? I mean, yeah, I wasn't exactly happy about losing a fight in that way, but I was ticked off at Ryoga, not you!"

Now it was Nabiki's turn to feel surprised. "You... weren't mad at me?" she asked, blinking slowly...' _I may have miscalculated_ ' she cunningly deduced

"Course not. It's not like you had me squirted to save your profit margins or something dumb like that," Ranma scoffed, waving away the idea of her stacking a bet like that. "You're way too nice for that."

Nabiki couldn't help but notice that having her sense of morality be genuinely complimented like that was an odd feeling...

"I was avoiding you last night because... well, I ain't exactly a good loser, but I was never blaming you for it. It's this stupid curse, after all," Ranma explained in a more level tone of voice now that they got that mixup out of the way. "Now, as for switching the engagements... where the heck did ya hear an idea as stupid as that?" he demanded a bit irately at the idea of being seen in such a fickle light.

"I... well..." Nabiki tried to find the words to explain the reasoning that had seemed so logically sound before, her traitorous cheeks flushing warmly in her embarrassment. "I thought... my sister has a lot of admirers..."

"Beats me why," Ranma huffed, rolling his eyes for good measure. "Why in the world would I wanna trade down from a girl like you? You're smart, you're fun to hang out with, you're cute, you've got a great smile... I'd have to be some kind of major-league dumbass to drop you for a short-tempered tomboy with the charm of a warthog with a bad tooth," he asserted.

Nabiki knew she shouldn't, but she couldn't help the giggle that slipped free at his less than flattering assessment of her little sister. "Careful, Ranma, or people might think that you actually like me," she teased him.

"An' why shouldn't they? You're my fiancee, after all," Ranma replied, grinning at her with a shameless, carefree smile that almost - but not quite - covered the way his own cheeks had reddened with embarrassment.

It was strange; minutes before she had been feeling sadder than she'd felt in ages, but now, she could hardly remember what she had been upset about. Light-hearted, Nabiki asked, "So, what happened last night?"

Ranma opened his mouth as if to answer, but then a furious feminine shout echoed to them from down the street.

"Leave my sister alone, you pervert!"

There was a sharp whistling noise, and then a sickeningly loud crack! Ranma collapsed bonelessly to the pavement as the stone Akane had thrown at him clattered to the ground in turn.

"Ranma!" Nabiki yelped instinctively, then turned her fiercest glower on her little sister as she came thundering up the street towards her. "What was that all about?!" she demanded.

"I stopped that pervert!" Akane protested, not sure why her sister was defending the creep.

"Yeah, you stopped him from telling me the real reason why he invaded your room last night!" Nabiki dryly retorted. "Didn't anyone ever tell you about not leaping before you look?"

"As if you could take anything a lech like him would say seriously!" Akane sneered, eyeing Ranma with contempt.

"You can't get all the facts unless you're willing to hear them first," Nabiki told her simply, before bending to try and lift Ranma. It... didn't go so well; Nabiki exercised fairly regularly to keep her weight under control, but she wasn't a powerhouse like her sister or her fiance, and she could barely support Ranma's weight on her shoulder as she heaved him up with a grunt of effort.

"What are you doing?" Akane asked her, not used to seeing Nabiki actually put physical effort into something. It was fascinating, in an almost surreal sort of way, really.

"Taking him to Dr. Tofu's, what's it look like? You really got him good with that rock, Akane!" Nabiki scolded her incredulously. "Now come and give me a hand - he weighs a ton!"

Akane rolled her eyes, and for a moment, considered disobeying Nabiki's command. Then she caught the look in her sister's eye which promised, if not physical pain, than a great deal of mental and emotional anguish, and hurried over to reluctantly hoist Ranma onto her own shoulders. If there was one thing she knew, it was that Nabiki could make her life miserable if she wanted, and right now, Nabiki looked mad enough to really get inventive...

* * *

At Dr. Tofu's Clinic...

* * *

Ranma groaned softly as he finally slipped back into consciousness, his skull still palpably throbbing. "What happened?" he moaned, before wincing at the pain his moan caused.

"Ah, you're awake! I was starting to worry... Akane really clocked you good," Nabiki chirped from his side, audibly relieved to see him up and about.

Ranma looked at her and blinked, still trying to gather his wits. "Nabiki? Where are we?"

"You're at my clinic. Nabiki and Akane brought you here for observation - you took a rather nasty crack to the head," a strange voice explained.

Ranma looked around, and realized he was lying on a clinic bed, with a young man - obviously the local chiropractor. "Oh, hi there. Sorry to have bothered you," he said, bowing his head as much as he dared when it felt like it was still ready to drop off.

"Oh, no problem! I'm Dr. Tofu Ono - and you're Ranma Saotome, right? Your father works for me here part-time. He's been a big help, especially when the children drop by." The man said, smiling warmly.

"He-he has been?" Ranma asked, too dumbstruck and scatter-brained not to be rude at the moment.

"Oh, yes. That panda transformation trick really amazes the little ones. He's really quite good with them. Now, how are you feeling, Ranma?"

"My head's aching... but other than that, I'm okay," Ranma slowly confessed, after allowing himself to take stock of the situation, although he was still processing the mind-boggling concept that his father could be... _ **useful**_.

"Excellent! Here's an ice pack to help you recover. Do you think you'll be okay if I leave you alone for a moment? I have some paperwork to attend to," Dr. Tofu elaborated as he held out said ice pack for Ranma to take.

"Huh? Oh, sure, go ahead doc. We'll be fine," Ranma assured him as the wounded martial artist gingerly placed the ice pack on his swollen noggin.

The doctor smiled, gave Ranma another quick lookover and then wandered off into the office adjacent to the main room, leaving Ranma alone with Nabiki. The heir to the Saotome School gingerly pressed the cold bag further against his tender scalp, hissing in pain as he did. "Hoo, boy; she's not going to forgive me any time soon, is she?" he lamented.

"Akane's always been a 'punch first, apologize later' sort of girl, I'm afraid," Nabiki conceded. "Speaking of which..."

"Yeah, you would be wondering why this happened," Ranma sighed. "Long story short? It's all Ryoga's fault."

"Yes, I'm well aware of how that pest woke us up last night," Nabiki scowled.

"Yeah? You obviously didn't hear him telling me what this whole stupid feud was about, I take it?" Ranma asked monotonically .

"He finally told you?" Nabiki asked, intrigued despite herself; the answer to the random invader's presence was faaaar too enticing to resist.

"Yeah... turns out the moron chased me all the way to Jusenkyo," Ranma explained bitterly.

The words hung in the air, and Nabiki quickly realized just what Ranma was insinuating. "But... that's not your fault!" Nabiki protested. "Even if he did get himself cursed there, he surely can't blame you for that!"

"Yeah, well, except he claims that he got cursed because me an' pop knocked him into a spring whilst we were fighting after getting our own curses," Ranma retorted with a sour scowl.

"He claims?" Nabiki questioned, immediately seizing on that ambiguity.

"Well, after I took the plunge, I was pretty ticked off. Hell, blind with rage would probably be a better term for it," Ranma conceded slowly; it wasn't easy to admit to losing control like that, considering how much the 'Art' required self-restraint. "I don't remember doing it... but I can't dismiss the idea I did it, either," he elaborated.

"Figures," Nabiki sighed ruefully. "So, how does that lead to you sneaking into my baby sister's room in the middle of the night?"

Ranma gnawed at his lip for a moment, then replied hesitantly, "Did Akane have a new pet at breakfast? A little black pig with a tiger-striped bandana?"

"Yes...?" Nabiki acknowledged with equal reticence.

"Tell me, did that pig look familiar to you?" Ranma asked her.

Nabiki gave him a bemused look at that, wondering if maybe Akane had hit him more viciously than Dr. Tofu had been willing to admit. But then, she felt the pieces falling into place. "You're kidding..." she breathed. "Akane's new pet is Ryoga?!"

"Got it in one," Ranma cheered her in a sardonic tone, giving her a wave of his hand.

"But... why didn't you tell her?!"

"I did!" Ranma protested, wincing. "But she wouldn't listen to me! Just stormed off to her room with him - and after hitting me with the Claw of The Elderly Eagle, too!"

"...The _**what**_?!" Nabiki asked, looking at Ranma as if he'd just grown a second head.

Ranma flinched. "It's a... well, it's a cheap shot for fighting girls that pops taught me, and I guess your pops taught Akane too. You sort of... well... you grab a girl with a claw strike. Like this." He reached out one hand, fingers splayed and curled into a gripping claw, which he hovered over Nabiki's breast. "Then you squeeze and pull it as hard as you can..." he concluded, sounding mortified.

Nabiki would have been ashamed to admit it, but it took her a few moments to piece together what Ranma was telling her. Still, once it all slotted together, she winced in sympathy. Just thinking about Akane doing that to her... oh, kami, it made her eyes water! "I am so, so sorry," she emphatically assured him.

"Yeah. So you can see why I figured I should just sort of... work around her," He concluded grimly. "I wasn't expecting Ryoga to put up the fight he did - he knocked me into her bed while I was trying to catch him."

"I see..." Nabiki said, and this time, her words were icy. "So he thinks he can get away with taking advantage of my sister's naivety? He's got another thing coming.." she declared darkly.

* * *

That afternoon, at the Tendo Dojo...

* * *

"I'm home!"

"Welcome home, Akane! How was school today?" Kasumi said, cheerfully greeting her youngest sister.

"Oh, it was great! The girls in my class just loved little P-chan here," Akane replied, gently caressing the ears of the tiny black pig riding in her backpack and grunting happily at the attention.

"Oh, that's good to hear... Nabiki wanted to see you in the living room, by the way," Kasumi told her.

"Huh? Really? Okay, thank you Kasumi," Akane said, taking off her shoes and slipping onto the genkan's platform to enter the house proper. As Kasumi vanished to do her usual Kasumi sort of things, Akane headed for the living room, curious as to what Nabiki wanted...

When she got there, though, she frowned angrily. "Oh. You." She sneered.

"Yes, him," Nabiki dryly quipped back. "And when we're done here, you're going to owe him an apology."

"He snuck into my room in the middle of the night like a pervert!" Akane protested, while giving a look of loathing to the hated intruder.

"And he had a reason for that. One that wasn't perverted at all," Nabiki evenly responded, laying a hand on Ranma's forearm to forestall his rising irritation. "He was trying to take Ryoga from your room."

Akane scoffed loudly. "That crazy story?! He told me the same thing when I woke up while he was creeping on me! There was no Ryoga there!"

"Oh... but there was," Nabiki replied; the smirk on her face and the triumphant tone to her voice sending a chill down Akane's spine. "Did you ever wonder why Ryoga was so hellbent on revenge against Ranma?" she asked, even as her fiance placed a steaming kettle on the table with a metallic clink.

Akane stared, initially not comprehending... but then awareness dawned, and horror sank its icy claws into her heart. "You can't be serious! You're not!"

"Well, it's easy enough to test, isn't it? Give your little pet a hot bath, right here, right now. If we're wrong, then no harm done. And if we're right..."

"I-I'm not pouring boiling water over P-chan! No way!" Akane protested, clutching her pet protectively to her chest.

"Then go and run the bath yourself. Makes no difference to us," Nabiki replied sweetly, shrugging her shoulders.

"I..." Akane swallowed, glancing between her sister, her new pet, and the bane of her life. "Alright, fine! I will! But you'll be sorry when I prove you wrong!" she vowed, and stormed off in the direction of the bathroom.

Nabiki waited until Akane couldn't overhear them, and then turned to Ranma. "There's no chance you're wrong, right?"

"Not at all," Ranma assured her.

They sat there in silence for several minutes. And then came an enraged feminine scream, the sounds of somebody being struck repeatedly with considerable force, and panicky male shouting. Feet thundered down the hall, Kasumi let out an exclamation of "Oh my!" and then the naked form of Ryoga came pelting through the living room, leaping out into the garden and springing over the wall with a wailing cry of dismay.

Nabiki blinked, trying to process what she'd just seen, whilst Ranma smirked. "Told ya," he gloated.

* * *

 _ **Chapter End & Closing Notes**_

* * *

Now, those who've watched episode 7 will notice some... discrepancies... between it and what I describe going down in this chapter's first half or so (as there was in the Ryoga stuff in the last chapter). Beyond the tweaks to account for the different relationships laid to ground in this fic, there's also the fact that Ryoga's arrival in Nerima is actually one of the series earliest plot-holes! See, we have absolutely no idea how Ryoga figured out that Ranma was at Furinkan, nor how he learned he was at the Tendo Dojo, never mind how he sent Ranma that challenge letter that Ranma gets in the start of episode 8. So, I took a few liberties to try and explain how it was that those things came to be. Hopefully, they don't detract from your enjoyment of this fic!

So, yeah, P-chan will not be a thing here. But let's face it; did you really expect it would? Nabiki is willing to take advantage of her sister, but letting somebody else do that? Not a chance in hell. So, we're going to find a new use for the concept of a cursed Ryoga, but you'll see that in due time.

Our next arc from here is going to be the Kodachi's Introduction arc, followed by Shampoo's Introduction arc. Here's where things are going to get WEIRD, and we do hope you'll be able to enjoy what we do!

I'm surprised nobody's actually brought this up until now, but I had the lecture planned, so why waste it? On the subject of Nabiki's... well, "horniness", keep in mind that in canon, Nabiki is the most "sex positive" of the Tendo sisters - it's part of her characterization as the most "modern womanly" of the trinity. Kasumi isn't entirely prudish - that itsy-bitsy bikini she was wearing in the season 7 beach episode shows that - but she definitely has a more old-fashioned view of sex; remember the scene from the story introducing P-chan, where Nabiki is perfectly okay with the idea that Ranma wanted to have sex with Akane, but Kasumi is protesting that they shouldn't do that before being officially married - stances they return to at the end of that anime episode. And that's not the first time Nabiki displays her flirtatious side; remember the canon's "Nabiki: Ranma's New Fiancee!" arc? Now, you can make the argument that she's playing things up there, and I'd agree with that, but still, Nabiki is far more flirtatious and sexually forward than poor hormone-challenged Akane Tendo. So, given her own fiance, one she likes from the beginning? Yeah ,she's not going to dither on the topic.

So, yes, Ranma will be losing his virginity in this story. Whether I'll do more with that than keep it off-screen, well, I haven't decided yet. But with Nabiki being who she is? Do you really think she's not going to introduce Ranma to the wonders of making out - and from there first through last bases?


	7. The Seeds are Sown! Enter Kodachi!

_**Authors Notes:**_ I'm glad that folks are enjoying this fic so much, and I'm particularly happy that nobody was bothered with how the P-chan affair came out in the last chapter. We gave it a lot of thought, but we concluded that it really didn't serve any purpose with Akane not being the designated love interest, and it also really didn't make any sense with Nabiki being so directly involved this time.

As for the ones who commented on the trust between Ranma and Nabiki; that's another result of starting with the base concept we did. Ranma and Nabiki don't have the bad blood that they do in canon by this point, and Nabiki's different personality to Akane means that she doesn't alienate Ranma the way her little sister does. Ranma is more willing to expose a vulnerable side to her than he is to Akane in canon because he, ironically, trusts Nabiki more, as she's never "attacked" him in the way that Akane has done.

* * *

 _ **Chapter 7: The Seeds are Sown! Enter Kodachi!**_

* * *

On an ordinary afternoon in Nerima, a not-so-ordinary red-haired girl wandered casually through the streets, munching away at the contents of a distinctly heavier than normal takoyaki box.

' _Pfheh. Moron. How can any guy really be so dense as to think a free octopus puff will make a girl want to ask him out?'_ Ranma harrumphed to herself. ' _I mean, okay, yeah, I played the bubbly girl who might kinda be interested, but it was his own fault for being sleazy enough to buy it. Creeps... guys like that make me ashamed of my own gender. Still, if they're gonna give me free extras, then I ain't gonna turn 'em down. If I gotta be stuck with this stupid body, I may as well enjoy the perks while I can.'_

The last takoyaki was momentarily balanced on the tip of a girlish thumb, then flicked through the air with a snap of said digit, only for Ranma to deftly snag it out of the air and swallow it in one bite.

' _...I hope Nabiki would be okay with me doing stuff like this, though. I mean, she tries to act like it don't bother her, but after that moron Ryoga tried to pretend to be Akane's new pet, I'm sure the whole boyfriend-into-girlfriend thing must be bugging her...'_

With that sour thought ringing in his mind, Ranma tossed the takoyaki box into a nearby rubbish bin. And that was when she heard female voices coming from the other side of a nearby wall.

"You're such a liar!"

"We'd never be friends with you!"

"Don't think we don't know what you're up to!"

"You're trying to stop us from competing in the tournament!"

"Why else would you ambush us?"

Three angry female voices hovering in the air, Ranma turned to the wall and sprang atop it. She found herself overlooking a vacant lot, occupied by four female teens; one, in a high-school uniform that she didn't recognize, was standing with her back to Ranma, but Ranma could make out she was holding something... whip-like. A gymnastics ribbon, maybe? She was being confronted by three girls in Furinkan High sports uniforms, each holding a pair of gymnastic clubs. All three of them were visibly bandaged, and scowling hatefully at their single opponent.

' _Hey, I think they're in my class...'_

Even as Ranma had that thought, one of the club-wielders shouted, "We're going to give you a taste of your own medicine! Let's get her!"

They rushed the fourth girl as-one... who simply pulled her ribbon taut between her fingers and then lashed out as though she were wielding a bull-whip! It whirled and flowed in blurring arcs, audibly snapping through the air as its bearer replied, "Now now, girls... If I weren't a lady!"

The Furinkan girls fell back with squeals of dismay, clubs either falling from fear-slackened fingers or being struck from their bearer's hands by the cracking ribbon-whip. All three fell to their knees on the ground as the ribbon-wielder began twisting her ribbon in a flowing spiral around herself.

"If I weren't a lady," she repeated imperiously, "I'd have to teach you a lesson!"

She began cracking the ribbon like a whip once again, the high-speed silk snapping over the heads of the cowering, crying teens who had moments before seemed like the attackers. "And then you'd really be in trouble! How lucky for you that I was reared better than that!" she spat with palpable disdain.

Now, Ranma had no real reason to interfere; this wasn't a fight she was involved in. And furthermore, the girls now crying and cringing on the ground **had** been the ones to start the fight, so on a technical level this was them getting their just desserts. But on the other hand, the ribbon-wielder clearly outclassed her opponents by a sizable margin, taking this out of the territory of justified retribution and into the territory of bullying.

And Ranma did _not_ like bullies.

Even as Ribbon-Girl was berating her downed opponents, Ranma had flicked the sunhat off of her head and sprung to intercept the makeshift whip. By the time the hat hit the ground, the boy-turned-girl was standing defensively between Ribbon-Girl and her fallen assailants, the ribbon held fast in her palm.

"C'mon, cut it out; I think you made your point already," Ranma scolded her, her tone polite but no less firm in its resolution .

Ribbon-Girl was actually not that bad looking, with a fine-featured face made more striking by purple eyes and black hair done up in a short ponytail that jutted out behind her left ear. A bead of nervous sweat rolled down the side of her head as she surreptitiously tugged on her ribbon, trying and failing to remove it from Ranma's grip. "You stopped my ribbon. That's never been done," she observed.

She sounded calm and matter of fact about it, but Ranma thought that she detected a faint hint of uncertainty at the fact.

"You're no ordinary girl, are you?" Ribbon-Girl asked, still holding that same conversational tone, even as she began to sidle in a clockwise direction from Ranma.

"Well... uh, yes, you could say that," Ranma replied mildly. She knew Ribbon-Girl was up to something, but she wouldn't strike the first blow in this situation.

Ribbon-Girl continued to circle, until she stepped over to where one of the Furinkan girls' clubs lay discarded. "It makes no difference to me!" She suddenly snapped, kicking the club up into the air and releasing her ribbon to snatch it up.

"I won't go any easier on you!" she cried, and charged at Ranma, lunging out with the club in a powerful thrust.

But, compared to Ranma, she might as well have been moving in slow motion. Ranma ducked beneath the jabbing club at literally the last second, knocking Ribbon-Girl from her feet with a ground sweep whilst she was distracted by the afterimage fakeout.

To Ranma's surprise, and professional admiration, Ribbon-Girl didn't panic as she flew through the air. Instead, she caught herself on her hands, using her momentum to swing around into a forward flip that ended in a five-star landing, her head craned over her shoulder to look back at Ranma, who sank into a counter-striking posture and waited for her response.

"You are quite formidable," Ribbon-Girl observed, and this time she sounded legitimately impressed. "Well done. I am the flower of Saint Hebereke High School. A rising star in gymnastics. I am Kodachi, the black rose," she declared, concluding this spiel by lifting a namesake black-petaled rose on a thorny stem to her chin and posing dramatically with eyes closed. Just for a second, though; as her eyes flew open, she tossed the rose to Ranma, who snagged it out of the air deftly between forefingers and thumb.

As the dumbfounded Ranma watched, the newly-dubbed Kodachi ran to the wall at the other end of the vacant lot, springing up onto it before turning around to point accusingly at Ranma. "You will keep that in mind, won't you?" she asked, before leaping up onto a nearby power pole, letting out a wild, almost shrieking peal of manic laughter as she did and scattering black rose petals in her wake.

Her hysterical-sounding glee filled the air even as she slid down the pole and then vanished onto the streets beyond.

' _...What the hell was that?'_

Ranma didn't have long to contemplate that thought, however, as she realized that now she was standing alone in a lot with three sobbing, wailing girls...

* * *

Shortly afterwards, at the Tendo Dojo...

* * *

Akane felt a headache coming on. One minute, she'd been minding her own business and reading her new manga; the next, Ranma had come barging into her room with a couple of weeping girls from their classroom, dumped them on her, and then left her to deal with them quick as you'd like.

She was going to get that jerk for this... but right now, she had other things to do. Like getting to the bottom of this mess.

"So, one girl did all this by herself? She really beat the entire Furinkan gymnastics team?" she asked. Even saying it aloud, the idea sounded ludicrous.

"She jumped us in the middle of the night!" one of the three wounded girls protested with injured dignity.

"The rotten sneak wanted to make us forfeit the tournament - we won't be able to fight in this kind of shape!" a second lamented with wounded pride.

"What tournament?" Akane pressed . Okay, so she wasn't exactly the biggest fan of the gymnastics team.

"You haven't heard? It's a Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics match between our team and that of Saint Hebereke - or Saint Bacchus, as the other schools like to call it," one of the girls explained.

"Yeah; and we found out just why their champion is undefeated! The cheating bitch..." groused another.

"Please, Akane, we're begging you; will you substitute for us? There's no way we can face off against her when we're this beat-up!" the third pleaded with bare desperation.

Akane hesitated; she'd never even heard of this style up until now! But... she couldn't turn down people who needed her. Ignoring the warm stroke on her ego that they were turning to her for help and not a certain gender-bending jerk. Besides, how hard could it be? Ranma could probably give her a few pointers anyway - he was the crazy martial arts nut around here.

Mind made up, she looked at the three solemnly and then slowly nodded. "I don't know how good I'll be," she warned them, "But I'll give it a try."

"Thank you! Thank you Akane!" the three girls cheered, excitedly clasping her hands in reverence.

"With you filling in for us, I know we'll win!" One of them proclaimed, grinning widely.

"Yeah, especially if you can get that redhead who saved us from Kodachi to join in," added a second.

Akane flinched at that suggestion. "Yeah, that's not going to happen," she unthinkingly quipped back. Ranma, in a leotard, in front of an audience? As if! "Trust me, I'll take care of this for you, and avenge you all," she promised them, triggering more happy chattering from the relieved Furinkan girls.

Unbeknownst to the quartet, this little promise was overheard by a strange girl, hiding in the Tendo garden under Akane's window and eavesdropping... though she found that little exercise cut off when a tap on her shoulder brought her face to face with a panda, waving a sign with 'Can I help you?' written on it...

* * *

That evening, in the Dojo...

* * *

"Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics? What the heck is that?"

Akane stared at Ranma in dismay, hoping that he was joking... but she didn't think Ranma was a good enough actor to look that convincingly empty-headed. "You must know it!" she protested. "I mean, you said you've been all over learning every martial arts style there is!"

"And when did I ever say I'd learned them all?" Ranma rebutted; although he appreciated the unwitting praise that Akane thought he'd know all the martial arts there are, it boggled his mind to contemplate actually _knowing_ them. His head would probably explode. "Seriously, I'm good, but I'm not a master yet - there's tons of styles I've never even heard of! Why do you got such a bug in your hair about it, anyway?" he asked.

Akane sighed... there went her last hope. "The girls you brought here were going to compete in a Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics match set next week; Furinkan High vs. St. Hebereke. That girl you saved them from cheated by ambushing them at night, so they asked me to substitute for them."

"And you don't even know how to use the style?!" Ranma blurted out incredulously.

"That's my little sister; always has been impulsively noble," Nabiki pitched in; she'd decided to do her homework in the dojo to keep her fiance company whilst he did his evening workout. Ogling her cute boytoy as he got all hot and sweaty totally counted as that, right?

"Sounds like just impulsiveness, to me," Ranma quipped.

"Oh, shut up, Ranma!" Akane snapped with an embarrassed blush, whilst Nabiki gave a light giggle. "I already said I'd do it, so there's no turning back now! I just hoped you could give me some pointers, but since you can't, then I'll just have to do my best. The girls left me with tools to practice with; and how hard could it be?"

Nabiki instantly glanced at Ranma upon hearing that. Luckily for him, he kept his thoughts to himself, but she could tell from the look on his face that he didn't think much of that little statement. Truth be told, neither did she; it didn't take a genius to see that those words were going to bite Akane in the rear...

Selecting a pair of gymnast's clubs, Akane smirked. "You just watch me, Ranma," she said, before making a mighty leap into the air, simultaneously flinging the clubs up till they nearly touched the roof whilst also twisting around, one foot outstretched. She landed gracefully on the floor...

...whilst the clubs clattered down several feet to either side of her.

Silence hung over the dojo, before Ranma conversationally asked, "Hey, aren't you supposed to catch those things?" Despite the innocent tone of his voice, Nabiki could tell the comment cut like a knife.

"I'm trying, okay?" Akane grumbled. "Maybe I'll try the ribbon..."

Nabiki watched as her little sister picked up a length of flowing pink silk and experimentally flicked it... then she groaned and covered her eyes in embarrassment as Akane lost all sense of control over it, causing it to wrap itself around her body.

"You, uh, supposed to tie yourself up like that?" Ranma asked, with the same innocence as before.

"Who asked you?!"Akane groused as she untangled herself with less than presentable grace and poise.

"Oink!"

At that, Akane finally whirled around on Ranma, thrusting an accusatory finger at him. "Shut up, Ranma! How dare you call me a pig!"

"I did no such thing!" Ranma denied, raising an eyebrow in confusion.

"Oink!"

"Oh, you think you're so funny, don't you?!" Akane snapped, even more incensed. "Even if you can do that without moving your lips... wait, how did you do that?" she asked, the confusion managing to edge aside her anger.

"I didn't!" Ranma assured her.

"Oink!"

Finally, all three teens turned and saw the source of the porcine squeals that had been interrupting them: none other than a bandanna-wearing black piglet that could only be Ryoga Hibki.

Akane's frown only deepened into a hateful glare as she took in the small, black form. "What in the world are you doing here, you pervert?!" she snarled. "Didn't you learn your lesson before?" she spat, snatching up a club and starting to advance on the other Jusenkyo-cursed youth.

The one formerly known as P-chan squealed loudly in dismay. Sitting up on his haunches, he clasped his forehooves together in a semblance of a praying posture, loudly grunting and squealing with porcine distress. The sight was so pitiful that Ranma felt compelled to intervene, shooting across the floor to interpose himself between the two.

"Come on, Akane, give him a break; it wasn't like he asked you to make him your pet," Ranma pointed out.

"He didn't fight the idea very hard, either! That little pervert was all raring to go climbing into bed with me!" Akane spat, trying to maneuver so she could at least toss one of the clubs at the figurative, and literal, pig. .

"Hey, it was probably the first warm bed he'd seen in a year! Besides look at him; he's obviously sorry, ain't that right, Ryoga?"

The pig desperately nodded his agreement to Ranma's words, too afraid to realize he was agreeing with his 'hated enemy.'.

"Besides, he must have had a reason to come here... if only to say sorry. Besides, I think he wants to talk to us; right, Ryoga?"

Another frantic nod, before Ryoga launched into a chorus of squeals and grunts, gesturing with his forehooves and clearly getting quite invested in his little speech. Ranma stood and watched him, occasionally nodding sagaciously, and even Akane felt her anger cooled to be replaced by curiosity. Nabiki had, of course, padded over to watch the entertainment herself. When Ryoga stopped, Akane looked at Ranma. "What did he say?"

"How should I know? I don't speak pig," Ranma replied flippantly.

The whole dojo went silent, two girls and a pig stared long and hard at Ranma. It was so quiet, one could hear the faint whistle of a breeze sailing through the open door, up until Ryoga firmly slapped one little hoof against his piggy head in exasperation.

"Okay, seriously, give me a sec and we'll try that again," Ranma said, before bending down and snatching up Ryoga. "Huh, look at that; maple leaf manju from Hiroshima and red bean triangles from Kyoto. Ryoga really must have been wanting to try and get back in your good books, Akane," he noted, untying the rope and letting the two confectionery boxes drop to the floor before hurrying off towards the bathroom.

Akane scoffed loudly. "Perverted little creep. I don't know what he was thinking by coming back here."

"Me either, but he's got some good taste... uh... are you going to eat those, Akane?" Nabiki asked, covetously eyeing the treats.

"Go ahead, Nabiki. I don't want anything of his," Akane retorted, whilst rolling her eyes. When it came to sweets, her sister was such a glutton.

Nabiki simply grinned and snatched up the boxes eagerly. Score! She was going to need to put a little more effort into tomorrow's workout session, but totally worth it!

* * *

Meanwhile, in the bathroom...

* * *

Soun Tendo was leisurely relaxing in the bathtub when the door slid open. "Oops, sorry Mr. Tendo, I didn't see you there. This'll only take a second," Ranma said, before he tossed something through the air to land in the bathtub with a splash and closed the door.

The Tendo patriarch blinked, but before he could even voice a protest, a black-haired head suddenly emerged from the water at the opposite end of the tub. He watched as a naked boy clambered out of the tub and silently walked out of the room. Once the door was shut behind him, he allowed himself the luxury of a resigned sigh.

He'd been hoping that having his son-in-law finally come to stay would change things for the better... he just wished they hadn't come with a side order of the surreal!

* * *

At the same time, across town...

* * *

The lights were on in the Saint Hebereke gym, as its gymnastics team trained long and hard into the night. The air was filled with the sounds of feminine exertion as its members practiced their stunts and skills, all under the watchful eye of their captain; Kodachi. She watched the proceedings with an imperious eye, and then shouted, "Right! That's it for today!"

Her words were greeted with a palpable wave of relief as the practicing girls stopped in their tracks.

"Whoah, that was rough!" complained one of the girls.

"I'm exhausted!" chimed in a second.

"Oh yeah, that reminds me, who's supposed to lead tonight's ambush?" asked a third.

"As long as we've got Kodachi on our side, our team's invincible!" chirped a fourth.

"Why do we even practice? We always win by default anyway," complained a fourth.

"You'd better not let Kodachi here you say that!" her companion hissed.

In fact, Kodachi had heard that little remark quite clearly. Luckily for the impudent... oh, what was her name again? Ah, yes, Rio Saito, now Kodachi remembered - her captain had bigger fish to fry, for her spy had returned from the Furinkan Dojo and was busily whispering to her what she had learned.

Leaving her underlings to whatever it was that they did when out of her sight, Kodachi walked over to her locker, adorned with an icon of her beloved black rose. Opening the door, she perused the fine supply of weapons she had stockpiled, before finally selecting an oni-hammer and a long, form-concealing cloak, which she swept across her shoulders.

'Fear not, Ms. Tendo. I'll be dealing with you very shortly,' she silently promised herself... before she sprinted from the gymnasium and began bounding through the streets, laughing with excited glee as her finely honed (and beautiful, if she did say so herself) legs propelled her through the streets in mighty leaps.

* * *

Back at the Tendo Dojo...

* * *

Ryoga tried not to flinch as Akane stared hatefully at him. "So? What do you want?" she growled.

"Well, ah... I want to start by saying how sorry I am for what happened last week..." Ryoga began. He realized in an instant that was probably not actually the best way to start things off when Akane scowled and began to push up the sleeve of her gi, looking for all the world as if she was about to bodily throw him out of the dojo. So he quickly blurted out, "And I can teach you Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics!"

"You can?!" the other three teens blurted out, staring at him with an array of stunned, confused and disbelieving expressions.

Seizing his advantage, Ryoga pressed on, forcing himself to sound confident. "Yes, I can. I mean, I'm not a master of it myself - it's a female-dominant style - but my mother taught me the basics, and I can pass that knowledge on to you, Akane. If you'll let me, that is?"

""Well..." Akane hesitated, then glanced to her supposed brother-in-law before sighing. "I suppose I don't really have a choice. You're better than nothing, which is where I started out this evening."

"Thank you, Akane; you won't regret this!" Ryoga assured her, trying to focus on the positive instead of feeling offended by her reaction. "Alright, let's begin... what do you know about Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics?" he asked.

"Not a thing; I only heard of it this afternoon," Akane confessed.

"I see... alright, we'll start from the beginning then..." As he said that, Ryoga stepped over to where Akane had discarded the ribbon from earlier. Picking it up, he continued, "The first thing you need to understand is that Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics is a true fighting style - this isn't a competitive sport with the martial arts label slapped on it, this is actual combat. When you get into the ring with your opponent, she is going to try and hurt you, understand?"

"Makes sense; when I saw that chick earlier, she was really giving those Furinkan girls a whipping with that ribbon of hers," Ranma mused.

Ryoga nodded, "Right, and that's the other major thing you need to remember about this style; bare-hands tactics are forbidden. Punching, kicking, chopping; all barred in an official match. They'll penalize you or even make you forfeit the match, depending on the terms - best to assume that in a formal match like this, they'll be an instant forfeit. A practitioner of Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics only uses tools to strike her opponent; ribbon, clubs, hoop and ball are the foundation of the entire style."

He took the ribbon and drew the silk taut between his fingers. "The first central technique is the ribbon," he declared. And then, without warning, he twisted around to face Ranma and deftly flicked the length of silk out in a horizontal spiral, the twining loops striking Ranma's body with an audible series of whip-cracks before the impact sent Ranma flying back to hit the wall with a thud.

Akane was staring wide-eyed at this point, her grudge with Ryoga long forgotten in the face of such an amazing stunt. "That's... that's cool!" she breathed reverently.

Ryoga simply smirked, gently twirling his wrist to keep the ribbon flowing in a tight, elegant spiral. Ranma glowered hatefully at his rival, silently vowing to get him back for that.

* * *

Outside the Dojo...

* * *

The street was quiet and still as a feminine form shrouded beneath her cloak paced beneath the streetlamps to the door onto the Tendo household's estate. A black rose clenched demurely in her teeth, Kodachi's thoughts seethed as she contemplated her mission.

'So, they've asked for help. What poor losers those Furinkan girls are. Akane Tendo, you'll soon rue the day you crossed the Black Rose...'

Laughing triumphantly, she cast aside her cloak and hefted her hammer, already planning on how to make her point felt to her unknowing rival... completely ignoring the odd looks she was receiving from passers by.

* * *

Soon afterwards...

* * *

The sound of exhausted feminine panting filled the Tendo dojo as Akane gasped for air, completely drained from her recent exertions to the point she was sprawled on the floor on her hands and knees, legs too weak to bear her weight.

Authoritatively, Ryoga snapped his own ribbon. "I think we've done enough for today," he declared judiciously.

Finally gulping down enough air to speak, Akane gasped out, "Thanks, Ryoga, for training me..." Though there was definitely still a part of her outraged by the nasty trick he'd played on her with his cursed form, he had still provided a light of hope in a situation where she'd had none. Plus, this had been a major workout, and Akane really felt like it had helped her - maybe, with Ryoga's help, she could finally show that smug jerk Ranma a thing or two...

"Your ribbon's coming along nicely. I'm certain you'll master it soon," he said in response.

Akane looked up at him hopefully. "Do-do you really think so?" she asked; that was even more than she'd dared to believe!

"Ah, man, he's lying through his teeth," Ranma interjected bluntly from his position by the wall.

Fury giving her energy, Akane shot up from the floor and whirled to face her tormentor, stomping her foot as she shouted, "Shut up, Ranma!"

"Hey, hey; let's all cool down now, Akane; why don't you go and get into the bath first? You had a hard training session, you need to rest now," Nabiki interjected. She really didn't feel up to fielding a snipe-fest between her fiance and her sister.

Akane glowered at Ranma, but ultimately she nodded, grumpily pulled the ribbon off and tossed it aside, and then strode from the dojo, heading for the bathroom. Moments later, Nabiki and the two boys followed, although they chose to instead head into the garden for a bit of fresh air.

Ranma sighed, "Man, she's so hopeless it hurts to watch," idly bouncing one of the gymnast's balls that she'd been practicing with on the end of his finger.

"Well, it's not like you're helping by picking on her!" Ryoga scoffed loudly.

"What are you talking about, pork-butt?" Ranma snapped back, glowering at Akane's new instructor.

"He kind of has a point, Ranma. I mean, I can understand why you're ticked - Akane never did apologize to you, but still..." Nabiki interjected carefully, she loved Akane and liked Ranma, so this constant sniping on both their parts was getting on her nerves.

Now Ranma gave his fiancee a hurt look. "Not you too! I'm not doing anything to her that my old man wouldn't do to me!" he protested, his indignation growing slightly more as both Nabiki and Ryoga sweatdropped in response.

"...That explains _sooo_ much," They replied in unison.

"Hey, it's not my fault she picked a fight with a rival master in a style she'd never even heard of!" Ranma pointed out. "She's gotta stay focused on improving if she wants to stand a chance - it's not gonna do her any good if Ryoga fills her head with lies about her training paying off!"

"Why would I lie to her?!" the indignant Ryoga snapped back.

"Uh, because you're still carrying a torch for her and you hope that if you butter her up, she'll give you a second chance?" Ranma mockingly suggested, smirking as Ryoga flushed at the accusation.

"S-shut up, Ranma! My only concern is teaching Akane! Some people learn better with positive reinforcement - just because your old man is a jerk doesn't mean that every teacher has to be one!" Ryoga protested.

* * *

Meanwhile, in Akane's bedroom...

* * *

Akane sighed softly to herself as she flopped down face first onto the welcoming embrace of her mattress. "I could sleep for a week," she moaned to herself, the pain of her aching muscles mingling with her doubts. The match was barely a week away; how was she supposed to win it? Even with Ryoga helping her, she had to be realistic: nobody could master a brand new style with just a week's practice enough to be a trained master in that same style!

Outside, Ranma suddenly sneezed, blinking before wiping his nose.

With another sigh, Akane slowly rolled over onto her back, looking up at the ceiling... and then letting out an "eh?!" of consternation as she took in what she was seeing. Clinging to her ceiling like the biggest spider she'd ever seen, clutching the frames like some ninja out of a manga, was a leggy black-haired girl in a blue gymnast's leotard, a black rose clenched in her lips and a huge wooden mallet slung across her back.

The stranger stared back down at Akane, then opened her mouth and allowed the black rose to fall from her lips - right before she let go and fell straight after it, slinging the mallet off of her back and into a momentum-fueled downwards swing! "Akane Tendo! Prepare to die!" she screamed.

Pure instinct took over and Akane leapt from her bed barely seconds before the hammer slammed down where her head had been, making the mattress bounce and roll as the impact rippled through it. Calling on all her training, Akane twisted in midair so that she landed on her feet, hands pulled up into an offensive pose. "Who are you?!" she demanded of her assailant.

"I'm from the Saint Hebereke Rhythmic Gymnastics team, of course," the black-haired girl scoffed. "I'm Kodachi, the Black Rose."

"Kodachi _**who**_?!" Akane blurted; that was the most arrogant moniker she'd heard since Kuno had dubbed himself 'Blue Thunder'. The next thing she knew, she was dodging backwards as the crazy bitch took a swing at her with the mallet!

"There's only one more week until we face each other in the gymnastics tournament next week, so let's both fight fair, okay?" Kodachi declared with palpable 'sincerity', punctuating each word with a horizontal swing of her mallet and emphasizing the end of her sentence with an overhead slam that smashed against the floor and nearly squashed Akane.

"Fair?! Compared to _**what**_?!" The indignant Akane snapped.

"I didn't ask you to sneak into my room!" she pointed out, lashing out with a snap kick... that Kodachi nimbly dodged, racing around Akane and putting some distance between them, hoisting her mallet aloft as she blocked the door. Akane thrust an accusatory finger at her hypocritical assailant as she added, "And I never asked you to attack me in the dark!"

"In the dark? Utterly ridiculous," Kodachi scoffed, her expression and her tone as innocent and carefree as a child's. "I came merely to size up my opponent before the big match next week, that's all."

"Don't you give me that!" Akane snarled in response. The nerve of this weirdo! Feigning innocence like that... who did she think she was fooling?

Kodachi simply smiled... and then, faster than Akane could react, she whipped out a gymnast's ribbon that she had concealed in her bosom and tied the youngest Tendo girl up with a deft flick of her wrist. Akane squawked in shock and tried to flex her arms, hoping to break free of the seemingly flimsy restraint, but it wouldn't budge. Her efforts merely elicited a peal of laughter - high-pitched and borderline shrieking - from her assailant. "You're finished, dear!" she mocked, then raised her hammer aloft. " _ **Die!"**_ she screamed, charging forward to deliver a crushing overhead blow, with Akane helpless to do anything but watch the mallet's striking face approaching her own.

" _ **Leave her alone!"**_ came another thunderous cry, mingled with the sound of glass shattering from behind both girls. A shadow flew past in the corner of Akane's vision, and the next thing she knew, the hammer she was certain was about to leave her in a concussed pile on the floor had halted dead in its tracks.

"Who are you?! What do you think you're doing?!" Kodachi demanded, straining to try and pull her mallet free of this sudden assailant's hands. She should have known that Akane would be a cheater, just like those other girls from Furinkan High who had tried to ambush her that afternoon!

Her opponent simply snarled at her, baring fangs like a wild animal. "Stopping you from hurting someone ten times better than you, that's what! I don't like hitting ladies... but you're no lady!"

Before Kodachi could retort to that, the strange youth used her own mallet as a lever to hurl her backwards, straight out through the window he had smashed open. She was so caught off-guard by this sudden feat of inhuman strength that she couldn't even try to compensate for the attack, resulting in her head audibly smacking against the frame and scattering her wits to the night winds. She only had time for one last, brief thought before she faded out of conscious...

' _Is this it...? Is this the end of the Black Rose of Saint Hebereke...?'_

* * *

Outside...

* * *

"Ryoga, are you nuts?!" Ranma shouted as he saw the unconscious girl spiraling out through the window and into the open air. He had been clinging to the side of the now permanently open window, having taken a moment to decide to follow Ryoga in his bull-in-a-china-shop approach to rescuing Akane, but since it looked like Akane's assailant was the one in trouble now, he kicked off of the wall and leapt to catch her, pulling her into his arms and then twisting around in a flip to forcibly redirect them both back down to earth, allowing him to take the impact of hitting the ground.

"Akane! Wait, that's not Akane... who is that?" Nabiki asked, still trying to process the speed with which everything had happened. One moment, she and the two boys had been joking around, the next moment they'd heard shouting and smashing noises from Akane's room, and then Ryoga leapt right up and through Akane's window like a human cannonball.

"This is the chick who was picking a fight with your sister. Ryoga wasn't exactly gentle about separating the two of them - she's out cold," Ranma explained, cautiously touching the goose egg already sprouting from the rear of her skull and checking for any signs of deeper injuries.

"And you rescued her?" Nabiki dryly asked.

"She's out cold! What was I supposed to do; let her fall and break her neck?" Ranma protested, not turning his head from his examination.

"I suppose not," Nabiki conceded; she knew he was right, but it took a moment to turn off the big sister instincts. "So, who is she anyway?"

"Uh... not sure. I think she called herself Kodachi?" Ranma sheepishly admitted. With perfect timing, the black-haired girl moaned and stirred. "Oh, she's waking up!"

' _Is this the afterlife?'_ was the first coherent thought to return to Kodachi's mind. The world was a blur that stung her eyes as she opened them, which combined with the pain from her skull to disabuse her of that notion - surely, heaven had no place for such petty torments!

"Hey, are you okay?"

The gently concerned and distinctly masculine voice brought her focus back to the world around her. She blinked her eyes, forcing her vision to clear, and then stared in wonder at the glory that unveiled itself before her. ' _Maybe I went to heaven after all... what a man!'_ she marveled, drinking in every spectacular facet of the handsome face hovering over hers - ooh, and she could feel strong yet gentle arms cradling her too, holding her like a precious jewel.

Instinctively, she turned her face, smiling blissfully to herself as she demurely covered her blushing cheeks. She kept her gaze averted for those agonizingly long seconds that her status as a lady demanded, and then she turned her longing gaze back to the man of her dreams.

"Ah...I...hold me!" she pleaded, reaching up first to clasp his shirt, and then to fling her arms around him in a bold embrace, before burying her own face into the crook of his shoulder. So **this** was what it was like to be held by a real man!

"Gak!" Ranma blurted, his exclamation of shock ignored by the girl currently busy cuddling him like a stuffed toy. "I swear, it's not what it looks like!"

His efforts to protest his innocence were derailed when Nabiki burst out laughing. "Wow, smooth, Mr. Romeo. No wonder she fell for you with charms like that," she teased him with a snarky grin.

Truth be told, she was a little displeased by the way this girl was latching onto Ranma like a limpet... but it wasn't like she hadn't watched the whole exchange. This wasn't Ranma's fault in the slightest; why should she get mad at him? Besides, watching Mr. Super Martial Artist be so clearly out of his depth from a little hug was _hilarious_ \- if she didn't know better, she'd think he was legitimately scared of girls!

...Although this 'Kodachi' could be letting **her** fiance go _any time now_ , thank you! Strange, though; why did that name seem to ring a bell?

"Ranma, you're unbelievable! Right in front of my sister no less - have you no shame?!" came an angry feminine voice from the broken window above them.

"Akane..." Ranma groaned in disbelief.

"Two steps forward, one step back... or is it the other way around?" Nabiki mused to herself.

Kodachi stirred from her position in Ranma's arms, finally looking him in the eyes again. "Ranma? Your name is Ranma?" she asked.

"Yeah. Ranma Saotome. And you're Kodachi, right?"

"That's right," she replied, nodding to emphasize her agreement. "I'm the Black Rose of Saint Hebereke."

"Who cares who she is? What do you think you're doing, Ranma? She just came in and attacked Akane!" Ryoga shouted down from the same broken window.

"Uh, saving her from going splat in the garden? What the hell, Ryoga? What were you thinking, throwing her out of the window like that, pork-butt!?" Ranma snapped back at his rival.

Kodachi twisted slightly to glower at her assailant over her rescuer's shoulder. As relieved as she was to finally find an end to the long dry spell in her romantic life, that didn't mean she was going to just shrug off what the vicious brute had done to her!

' _Just you wait, cretin; the Black Rose will make you rue the day you crossed her!'_ she vowed to herself.

Of course, as her savior and her assailant got into a shouting match with each other, with that dreadful Akane Tendo chiming in like the ignorant little peasant that she was, it had completely spoiled the romantic mood she was going for. Sighing softly at the waste of it all, she reluctantly extracted herself from Ranma's arms and took several steps away from him. She made a show of brushing herself off as she announced, "Well, I know when I am not wanted. I will see you in the tournament, Ms. Tendo, and then you will rue the day that you crossed the Black Rose! And as for you, my darling Ranma..." she winked at him and blew him a kiss. "We shall say au revoir for now, but we will meet again..."

She burst into peals of laughter, whipping out her trusty spare ribbon and sending black rose petals flying hither and yon in a whirling storm worthy of her exit. Then she sprinted for the wall and sprang over it, still laughing fit to burst as thoughts of vengeance and romance danced in her mind.

In her wake, she left four staring teens, none of them sure of how to break the awkward silence. Finally, Ryoga spoke up by saying, "Sorry about your window, Akane."

"Oh, it's alright, Ryoga. Better the window than my head. But can you at least help me clean up the mess?" The youngest Tendo sighed in response.

"Sure thing!" Ryoga eagerly responded, anxious to further make his way back into Akane's good graces. And so the two disappeared back into Akane's room, leaving Ranma and Nabiki alone in the garden.

Ranma sighed softly, and shook his head. "Well, that was... something," he muttered.

"Tell me about it... I know a lot of girls like the white knight routine, but she was something else," Nabiki observed, still distracted by a half-hearted effort at trying to place that girl's name.

A shiver ran down Ranma's spine as slowly developing instincts for dealing with girls sounded warning clarions in his brain. "Hey, whatever she thinks we have, it's all in her head! I'm not interested in her!" he desperately assured Nabiki.

"I do have eyes, Ranma," his fiancee dryly replied. "I know I was a little paranoid when it came to Akane last week, but that doesn't mean I'm going to start crying in self-pity if another girl starts mooning over you. Especially not when it's a nut like this Kodachi girl. No, once this stupid little fight between her and Akane is over and done with, she'll be out of our lives and everything will be back to normal."

Ranma's relief was palpable, and he smiled at Nabiki's response. "Yeah, I know. But... thanks for trusting me, Nabiki."

"Fair is fair, Ranma," Nabiki replied. Despite the breezy tone of her words, she was smiling too.

* * *

Chapter End & Closing Notes

* * *

Here's an interesting note about a little continuity error in Ranma 1/2's anime canon; at the start of the Kodachi intro episode, Ranma is shown using his girl-side to order an ice-cream cone, receiving a free scoop from the smitten vendor. But in the chronologically later Shampoo intro episode, Ranma explains he's never had ice-cream before that first sundae with Akane. This little goof up is unique to the anime; in the manga, Ranma is shown ordering a bag full of sweet buns instead.

So, Kodachi has reared her head! Any bets on what will happen next?


	8. Battle of the Black Rose!

**Authors Notes:** I can only apologize for the delays; real life decided it would be funny to start redoubling its meddling in my fanfic writing life. Still, we hope that you enjoy this latest offering!

Sorry for not saying anything more specific, but nobody really asked anything in the latest batch of reviews, so without further ado, let's get into the fanfic!

And, as a special Xmas day bonus; I am proud to announce the debut of a new fanfic: "Love Opens Many Doors", a Ranma 1/2 crossover with Dungeons & Dragons, starting in the anime version of the "Nabiki: Ranma's New Fiancée" arc and with a certain Planescape slant. My first ever properly categorized crossover, it can be found in the Ranma/D&D crossovers section of this site, or just from my author's profile.

* * *

 _ **Chapter 8: Battle of the Black Rose! Her Name is Kodachi Kuno?!**_

* * *

Gaining a fiancé had, in Nabiki's opinion, brought with it an assortment of ups and downs. Mostly ups, in the form of her surprisingly sweet and definitely very cute new boytoy. But there were some very definite downsides... like her would-be father-in-law's ridiculous _**insistence**_ on sparring with Ranma at what Nabiki declared to be the most ungodly hours of the morning!

So it was that the pajama-clad teen girl was currently giving the stink-eye to three cowed Jusenkyo victims that morning. "I get why Ranma got involved; his father doesn't give him a choice. But what's your excuse, Ryoga?" she asked in her iciest tone, her gaze keeping the trio pinned as few other things could.

The little black pig sitting in between the sulking panda and the sheepish redheaded girl began to oink loudly, rearing back on its hind-legs and gesticulating with its little forehooves in the most animated fashion. Nabiki watched silently until Ryoga settled back down again, and then she turned to Ranma. "Care to translate that into human?" she asked, ignoring the way Ryoga slumped dejectedly onto the floor.

"Long story short? Ryoga was just doing his morning stretches when Pops decides that he wants to attack him and make it a three-for-all brawl," Ranma dryly assessed the situation with a thumb jabbed at the miscreant in question, prompting Nabiki to nod; she'd honestly expected it was something like that.

"Mr. Saotome! I'm disappointed with you. That's really not very nice at all, especially when you promised Father that you would try to show a little more courtesy about these sparring sessions." Though gentle as always, the scolding tone of Kasumi's words was unmistakable as the eldest Tendo daughter made her entrance into the living room. "Here you are, Ranma; hot but not boiling, just like you asked."

"Thanks, Kasumi," Ranma replied gratefully, before taking the kettle from her and pouring it over her head, transforming back into a boy. "Here y'go," the aquatransexual said to Ryoga, reaching over to pour some hot water onto the pig... only for Genma to snatch the kettle away and upend it fully onto himself. "Hey! Selfish jerk - whaddya do that for?!" Ranma complained.

"Quit whining, boy; there's plenty more hot water in the kitchen," Genma rumbled in response.

"But you could have shared that water with Ryoga - he's only a little pig, he wouldn't have taken much," Kasumi scolded Genma. She didn't like to be so blunt, but she had learned over the past few weeks that her household's newest guest often needed to be reminded on how to act with civility. Seeing the complete lack of concern on Genma's face made her want to sigh; he just wouldn't take her seriously. Dismissing it as a lost cause, she turned to Ryoga with an apologetic smile. "Still, he is right. Come along, Ryoga; I'll get you some more hot water."

Ryoga let out a shrill porcine squeak at that and frantically shook his head, much to everyone else's confusion. Ranma promptly reached down and picked up the boy-turned-pig by his bandanna. "Here y'go, Kasumi," he said, passing the struggling, flailing piglet to the eldest Tendo.

"Thank you, Ranma. Come along now, Ryoga; we'll get you changed back and then you can help me serve breakfast, okay?" Kasumi beamed as she said this, causing Ryoga to slump into a mournfully resigned silence.

Nabiki watched as Kasumi left for the kitchen, puzzled by Ryoga's reactions. "What was his deal? I thought he hated being a pig?"

"Beats me," Ranma shrugged. "Ryoga always was kind of weird; who can say why he does anything that he does?"

"Oh my!"

The teens whipped their heads up at the sound of Kasumi's startled shout, their gazes snapping over to the kitchen. "Kasumi!? Are you okay?" Nabiki called out.

Her elder sister promptly stumbled into view, eyes still wide and... was she blushing?! "Um... I'm fine, Nabiki. Clothes! Ranma, Ryoga's clothes? Where?" she asked, and surprisingly she didn't look at Ranma as she said this.

Ranma gave her a puzzled look, but then his eyes lit up with dawning comprehension as... a blush crept over his face too, leaving a very confused Nabiki to look at him in turn. "Oh, yeah... sorry, Kasumi; there should be spare ones in the dojo," he bashfully told her.

Kasumi nodded and swiftly walked away, allowing Nabiki to finally turn her full attention to her fiance. "What just happened?!" she demanded hotly, narrowing her eyes solely at Ranma now.

"I... forgot that Ryoga's clothes don't stay with him when he transforms," Ranma sheepishly confessed.

Now it was Nabiki's turn to get wide-eyed as she realized what had just happened. "Ah. That... explains it."

"Yeah... poor Kasumi," Ranma nodded, seeing Ryoga naked would leave anyone mentally scarred in his opinion.

Fortunately, Kasumi was able to get Ryoga his change of clothes before Akane stumbled down to join the rest of the family for breakfast... leaving Nabiki feeling rather jealous; how the heck did her sister sleep through the Saotome morning racket?

Aside from the presence of a seventh person at the breakfast table that morning, things went in a fairly normal and reasonably quiet fashion. Perhaps sensing that he had pushed his guest status to its limit for the morning, Genma didn't even try to swipe any extra portions off of anyone else's plates. No, the oddest thing came to happen once the meal was finished...

"Thanks for the food, Kasumi. I better get my school bag," Akane said, already getting up to go retrieve it.

"What for?" Ranma asked distantly, looking up from where he was making sure he'd gotten the last of the leftover food.

"What do you mean, 'what for'? I have school today, just like you!" Akane snapped back. Nabiki herself was curious but sat back and nibbled on the last of her breakfast.

"Oh, no you don't! You are going to march right over to that dojo and wait for Ryoga to finish up so he can get back to training you!" Ranma declared firmly, making the Eternally Lost Boy's head snap up from his own breakfast bowl as he gave Ranma the most bemused look that Nabiki had ever seen.

"What? And miss class?" Akane spluttered incredulously, looking at Ranma like he had lost what little sense Nabiki's younger sister still ascribed to him.

"You don't got time for class!" Ranma snapped, not backing down an inch. "There's only six days until that Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics match of yours, so you need to spend every waking moment training!"

"That's ridiculous!" Akane protested.

"Hey, it's no less than what my old man would make me do if I challenged a style's master to a match in a style I'd never even heard of before!" was Ranma's more level response. "You got the honor of your school hanging over your head - you **have** to give this your all, and that means training, training and training until you drop!"

"Too true," Genma declared, hoping to ingratiate himself after his earlier stumble. "Ranma's quite right; in a situation like this one, you don't have time for something as superfluous as school or hanging out. If you want to have a chance of victory, you will need to train at every available moment, isn't that right, Tendo?"

Nabiki's father blinked at being put on the spot, but rallied with surprising speed. "That's correct, Saotome. I will contact the school and tell them that you will be unavailable this week, Akane," he declared in his best authoritative tone, causing the startled youngest daughter to wilt and nod her begrudging acceptance.

As much as missing out on school and her friends irked her, she was also more than happy to see her father _finally_ treating her like a martial artist.

Ranma promptly reached over and clapped Ryoga on the shoulder. "Good luck with her training, dust-breath. C'mon Nabiki, it's time we got going," he declared, standing up.

"Right behind you, Ranma," she replied, politely placing her bowl and chopsticks on the table before standing up in turn.

* * *

Shortly afterwards, on the way to Furinkan High...

* * *

"I can't believe you told her to take a week off school to practice for the match," Nabiki marveled, usually Akane wouldn't miss school unless dragged away by the proverbial team of wild horses.

"I can't believe she needed me to tell her!" Ranma replied, from his usual perch on the fenceline. "I mean, seriously;did she expect Kodachi to just roll over and give her the victory?"

"Do you think a week will help?" Nabiki asked, a slight pang of concern for her little sister nagging her.

"Well, it certainly can't hurt!" Ranma shot back. "I mean... well, I don't really have the highest hopes," he confessed, "Kodachi may be willing to play dirty, but she's legitimately skilled, too. I saw her in action - three-to-one odds, started on the defensive, and she switched the match around in a split-second. Still, at least if she's put her all into training, Akane can know she did her best when she goes down."

"By rights, as her sister, I ought to be scolding you for not having faith in Akane... but, frankly, that sounds about right," Nabiki admitted.

Minutes later, the two of them were approaching the gates of Furinkan High... which is when their morning took its first real turn for the odd...er

"Akane Tendo!? Where are you?! Come out and show yourself, coward! The Black Rose of Saint Hebereke demands a fight!"

Ranma and Nabiki pulled to a stop, watching in disbelief as Kodachi bounded restlessly back and forth across the front courtyard of the school, springing from one high place to another as she dramatically searched for Akane. At least, until she spotted Ranma, that is; then she sprang over to him in a single massive leap, flipping several times before landing with pinpoint precision in front of the reluctant object of her ardor.

' _Okay... so that's why Ranma was being so hard on Akane. She really doesn't stand a chance, does she?_ ' Nabiki thought to herself with resignation.

Oblivious to the thoughts running through Nabiki's head, Kodachi clasped her hands and gave Ranma her most winning smile. "Why, Ranma darling - how wonderful to see you again! I had hoped to speak to Akane Tendo, but you are a far more welcome sight in my eyes," she purred, not paying Nabiki any notice.

"Um... yeah, hi..." Ranma replied uncertainly, more than making up for Kodachi's apathy in his fervent glances towards Nabiki. "Yeah, Akane's not going to be here today."

"Oh, is that so? Well... perhaps you and I can pick up where we left off, hmm?" Kodachi crooned, deftly closing the distance between the two of them to rest herself sensually against Ranma's chest. Ranma promptly froze up like 'a cat in a room full of rocking chairs' if Nabiki recalled the phrase correctly.

Nabiki couldn't help but smirk in amusement; she could _see_ the tremor of fear rippling through her fiancé's body, and it managed to be simultaneously heartwarming that he was so clearly worried about her feelings, and yet also funny to see him overreacting in such a way.

"No!" Ranma shouted, jerking away from Kodachi as if she were red-hot and raising his hands in warding gestures. "I-ah, I mean I gotta go. Yeah, that's it, I gotta go to school," he said, quickly turning and striding briskly away - most would call it bolting, but Nabiki had seen how fast Ranma could actually move when he wanted to.

"See ya later!" He called back to her, trying to make it seem less like he was actually fleeing from Kodachi.

"Ranma, darling! Wait!" Kodachi called plaintively, hurrying along in Ranma's wake.

Following at what she judged to be a safe distance from behind, Nabiki continued to watch the show as Ranma accidentally ran headfirst into Tatewaki Kuno.

"Gah! Saotome, that was a low blow!" The self-proclaimed Blue Thunder of Furinkan High complained, surreptitiously rubbing his nose from where Ranma's head had rammed into it as he glowered at his underclassman.

"Ah, man, Kuno, I don't got time for this -gurk!"

Whilst Ranma and Kuno had been bickering, Kodachi had caught up to Ranma, pressing herself up against his back with a soft blush on her face. "Ran...ma...darling," she crooned blissfully, actually nuzzling Ranma like a long lost lover.

' _Wow, drama queen much?'_ Nabiki mused to herself, brow raised incredulously, not really sure what to make of the situation. Normally this was more Akane's natural state...huh.

' _What is with this chick? How much more of a hint do I need to give her?'_ Ranma complained in the privacy of his own head. He really didn't want to hurt a girl but it was rapidly approaching being physical...or risking Nabiki's anger, as Ranma could only imagine how tired of this Nabiki was getting.

What Kuno did next surprised both of the engaged teens. He walked a circle around Ranma and Kodachi, humming thoughtfully to himself as he stroked his chin, visibly contemplating something.

When he returned to standing in front of Ranma, he smacked a fist against his open palm decisively, before twisting his right hand into the traditional warding gesture (middle and ring fingers curled inwards) and pulling out a traditional paper fan with his left hand, which' he flicked open at the same time. "Very well! You may date with her," he solemnly informed Ranma.

"What?!" was Ranma's ever-so-eloquent response to that little statement.

Kodachi spun him around, looking up into Ranma's face with a radiant expression. "Ranma, did you hear? This means we're officially a couple!" she cheered, complete with a little bounce that had some of the male bystanders flying back with nosebleeds.

At that, Ranma hit his limit. "Hey wait a minute, not so fast!" he snapped as he pulled back 'a safe distance'. "Going out with you is the last thing that I want, get it?" he said, glowering at the gymnast - before he recoiled, grimacing at her response.

Even Nabiki had to admit she was impressed; Kodachi's face had just twisted itself up into the most angry-yet-sad expression she'd ever seen, tears copiously pouring down the gymnast's cheeks even as she glowered at Ranma. Nabiki had never seen anyone able to bring up such waterworks on cue before.

Kodachi sniffed, and then shrieked, "You hate me then, is that it?!"

Instinctively, Ranma tried to placate her - he didn't like this crazy girl, but one thing his father had always told him: don't make girls cry! "No, no!" he tried to assure her. "I just-"

Kodachi simply buried her face in her hands. "You do! Hate me, I can tell! Don't lie to me!" she wailed.

Ranma growled, 'W _oulda been nice if you told me what to do when they are_ _ **already**_ _crying, pops,'_ clenching his fist and drawing himself up. "I told you already, that's not it!" he groaned out, before darting over to stand behind Nabiki, his hands on her shoulders in what he thought was an emphasizing gesture, but to Nabiki looked more like he was trying to hide behind her.

"I've got a fiancée! So that's why I can't date you!" he called out.

Nabiki couldn't help it; she started to giggle at the sheer desperation in Ranma's voice. "Wow, what a smooth talker you are, Ranma." Turning back to give him a smirk and cheeky wink.

"Aw, come on, Nabiki, I'm sorry," Ranma began to apologize, only to be cut off as Kodachi stepped forward, now looking perfectly composed - inquisitive, if anything.

"Fiancée? You are betrothed to this girl?" She asked, casting a look at Nabiki that Ranma didn't like. She'd had a similar look in her eye when she'd had her little fight with those Martial Arts Gymnasts from Furinkan the previous afternoon.

Still, maybe she could be reasonssed with... "Yeah! This is my fiancée, Nabiki Tendo," Ranma said, giving her shoulder an affectionate gentle squeeze whilst stepping out from behind her.

"Nabiki Tendo...? Any relation to Akane Tendo?" Kodachi asked.

"My little sister," Nabiki replied calmly.

"I see..." Kodachi purred. "I have heard of you, Ms. Tendo... you have a certain reputation for being most practical. Tell me; what would it take to convince you to release my darling Ranma to me?"

"Ranma is not for sale," Nabiki replied flatly, the iciness of her tone sending shivers of fear down the spines of anyone within earshot who had ever owed her money, the chill almost palpably radiating from her making it clear to all who'd ever dared cross her that engagement had not subdued the infamous Ice Queen of Furinkan High. Even Kodachi blinked in the face of Nabiki's frigid wrath. Then, after a few seconds to let her words properly sink in, Nabiki smiled a darkly mischievous grin. "But... I might be willing to discuss renting him," she declared lightly.

"Nabiki!?" Ranma blurted out, staring at his fiancée in shock.

"How much for a date?" Kodachi asked bluntly, sizing both Ranma and Nabiki up like a shark eyeing a vulnerable tuna and a rival shark, respectively.

"Well, considering all the factors... I think that three hundred thousand yen is a fair price," Nabiki purred on pure reflex, grinning wickedly at the chorus of shock echoing from onlookers. ' _That'll knock the wind from her sails. As if I'd really let a nut like her run around with_ _ **my**_ _Ranma...'_ She thought to herself.

"Sold!"

' _Wait, what? Ow!'_ Nabiki's hands flew up to clasp her face as something slapped into her nose with pinpoint precision, stars momentarily bursting behind her eyes from the impact. Gingerly, she took her hands away, blinking to clear her vision... only to gape in shock as she saw one of the biggest rolled bundles of yen notes that she'd ever seen lying in her palms. Her gaze snapped up as Kodachi let out a peal of almost shrieking laughter, the other Furinkan students collectively wincing at the cacophony.

"A small price to pay, for an evening with my beloved! I shall send someone to pick you up as soon as school finishes, my darling; we shall dine at my abode this evening! Alas, but I have prior engagements to attend - wait for me, Ranma darling, for your Kodachi shall return!"

Another shrieking laugh filled the air as Kodachi suddenly whipped out her gymnastics ribbon, twirling it in a horizontal spiral that filled the air with drifting black rose petals before she sprang away, leaping off like a mad black bunny-girl.

In her wake, all was silent, save for the wind stirring the black rose petals that still floated here and there. Finally, Ranma managed to draw his scattered wits back together and turn to his fiancée. "What the hell, Nabiki?!" he protested, an expression that was half outrage and half exasperation on his face as she met his eyes.

"I was kidding! I didn't think anyone would pay such a ridiculous price - I just wanted to mess with her head!" Nabiki quickly assured him, her grip on the money still as strong as a clam's, no reason to let the crazy person money go to waste.

"Truly, the woman is quite unstable... but then, she never did think twice about blowing her weekly allowance," Kuno mused aloud, before patting Ranma on the shoulder to get the underclassman's attention. "Saotome, I know we have had our... differences... but, please; be gentle with my little sister's heart."

"Don't worry, I got no intentions to lead her on... whoawhoawhoa, hold a tick, your _**sister?!**_ " Ranma blurted out incredulously, turning a now gobsmacked expression to his would-be rival.

Nabiki was also staring at Kuno with a dumbfounded look. How had she forgotten that Kuno had a sibling?! No wonder she'd paid the almost without a second's thought, it'd have needed to be ten times that before a Kuno gave pause!.

"Yes, that was my little sister Kodachi," Kuno confirmed with aplomb.

Ranma and Nabiki continued to stare at him in shock. "I knew something about her was familiar, somehow..." Nabiki murmured to herself, still mentally kicking herself for making such a rookie blunder.

"Yeah, now that I think about it, I can see the resemblance," Ranma admitted, nodding his agreement. Then he remembered what had just happened, and he turned a scowl to his fiancée. "And you rented me out to her?" he asked icily.

Nabiki promptly put on her best puppy-dog eyes, even pouting to heighten the effect. "I'm sorry, Ranma... I really didn't think she'd take me seriously! Please, forgive me? I'll give you half of what she paid..."

If it were anyone else, wild horses couldn't have dragged those words out of her mouth. But Ranma wasn't anyone else... besides, 150,000 yen was still a massive upswing in her personal finances!

' _...Damn it; why does she have to be so cute?'_ Ranma lamented within the privacy of his own mind, not letting up the glare even as Nabiki let her lip tremble a little. ' _Oh, well... I guess I can't really blame her...besides, for that much money, the old man would have rented me out for real and without even blinking,'_ he admitted to himself. He heaved a sigh and looked away from Nabiki. "Fine. I'll do it. Just this once!" he quickly added, stabbing an accusatory finger at her.

"I won't do that again," Nabiki quickly assured him. ' _Shame... could have been profitable. But then again, is the money really worth risking having Kuno's crazy sister sniffing around? After what Tachi did with Akane... I'd bet anything that she's cut from the same cloth...'_

Unaware of his fiancée's private thoughts, Ranma turned away from her. "Alright... I guess I'll see you when I get back tonight," he declared, and began heading off to class.

Nabiki winced slightly at the cold brush-off. 'But I can't really blame him...' she admitted to herself. She let Ranma get a head start, and then followed after him, since they had to go the same way to get to their respective homerooms.

* * *

That afternoon, after class...

* * *

Ranma cast a wary but hopeful eye across the schoolyard, looking for the unmistakable form of Kodachi "Black Rose" Kuno. ' _No sign of her... and no sound of that creepy laugh of hers, neither. Maybe she forgot?'_

Of course, he hoped too soon; no sooner had he emerged from the gate when one of the fanciest cars he'd ever seen suddenly pulled over on the street in front of him. A proper car nut could have waxed euphoric about the model, the paint-job, and a dozen other features beside, but to Ranma, his knowledge of cars started and ended at being able to identify it as a limousine. And, frankly, any concern with the car was swept aside when the door swung open and Kodachi Kuno poked her head out, smiling proudly.

"Ranma, darling! Over here!" she called, beckoning Ranma to join her in the car's spacious interior.

Understandably, Ranma was hesitant to approach the fancy loonymobile, glancing back behind himself to where Nabiki was standing. Seeing her nodding encouragement, along with a 'too late to back out now' shrug, Ranma sighed and resigned himself to his fate. "Hey, Kodachi," he mumbled reluctantly, slowly striding forward and sliding himself into the seat.

As the limousine's door closed and it pulled away from the sidewalk, Tatewaki Kuno shook his head in disbelief. "Truly, Nabiki Tendo, thou art either very brave or very foolish..."

Nabiki bristled at the insult, but refused to let Kuno see that he'd managed to upset her. Instead, she put on a carefree smile. "Unlike some women, I have every faith in Ranma's word, Kuno."

"In truth, t'was not Saotome's honor I was casting aspersions on," Tatewaki replied gravely.

That drew a baffled look from Nabiki. "You do realize what you're insinuating about your sister, right?"

"Make no mistake, mercenary woman; I love my sister, truly I do. But I am not blind to her foibles. She is a creature of deep-running passions, and when she sees something she desires within reach..." Tatewaki shrugged. "She is quick to seize that which tempts her," he concluded.

Prickles of fear were starting to creep the length of Nabiki's spine. She couldn't help but remember what Kodachi had done the previous evening, and unthinkingly she looked after the departing limousine. For the first time in a long time, she found herself wondering if the money had been worth it...

* * *

Meanwhile...

* * *

Despite his lack of ease at the company, Ranma still couldn't keep from admiring the interior of the limousine. "Wow, fancy... never been in anything like this before," he confessed quietly as he inquisitively stroked the plush leather seating.

"Yes, it is quite splendid, isn't it? Truthfully, my brother and I rarely have call to use it, but I thought it would make an auspicious start to our time together," Kodachi declared, gently sliding across the leather seating so that she could rest her head on Ranma's shoulder.

Ranma tried not to shudder; even if he didn't like Kodachi, he figured it was uncalled for to be rude whilst they were on a date... even if it was a paid date that he was only on because he had a fiancée whose love of money could evidently outweigh her common sense...

' _Seriously, Nabiki, you_ _ **owe**_ _me for this...'_ Ranma thought to himself with a small 'hmph'. Trying to get off of that train of thought, he reached for an alternative topic. "So, ah, where are we going?"

Kodachi smiled brightly, visibly basking in even that meagre attention - something that actually made Ranma feel a little guilty. "To be honest, Ranma darling, I had so many ideas for where we could go that it was hard to choose. But, ultimately, I decided a simple afternoon together in the comfort of my family home would suffice - at least, for our first date..."

Ranma bit back the obvious rejoinder to that little comment. ' _That's... actually, not so bad. Would feel really awkward going to a movie or having a fancy dinner or whatever with Kodachi when I haven't even done that sort of thing with Nabiki yet...'_ he admitted to himself. ' _Wonder what kind of place she calls home? Both her and her brother act pretty high and mighty, so it's gotta be nice...'_

* * *

One short drive later...

* * *

' _...Nice was an understatement...'_

As thoughts go, it was not exactly the most eloquent. But given that Ranma was currently balking at the sight of the biggest, most luxurious estate he'd ever seen - a full-fledged honest-to-goodness feudal era _**mansion**_ sitting in the middle of Nerima! - well, one had to give him credit for being able to string the words together!

Kodachi laughed, the shriek of hysterical glee drawing Ranma forcibly back to reality. "Did my brother never tell you? The Kuno family is amongst the most prominent families of Japan! Our financial holdings are vast indeed!"

' _I know that brother dear always told me that a worthy mate would not seek to exploit our wealth, but it cannot hurt to impress upon my darling Ranma the many ways in which I would make a superior spouse to a peasant like Nabiki Tendo...'_ Kodachi thought to herself smugly.

"But come, darling; allow me to escort you to the interior gardens, then I shall prepare a small feast for you," she purred seductively, molding her form to Ranma's side.

Despite himself, Ranma's ears, and stomach, perked up at the mention of 'food'. "Ah, alright then? Lead the way..." he said, gesturing for Kodachi to escort him.

A gesture he immediately regretted when Kodachi linked her arm with his in a Western style and began to draw him along the massive walkway into the front doors... but, "in for a penny, in for a pound", as he'd heard more than once on the docks.

Inside, the mansion was as opulent as its exterior had suggested. Staircases, corridors, and doorways all branched out from a fountain centered entrance hall, leading away into what Ranma presumed to be a veritable labyrinth of rooms and passageways. The decor was, surprisingly, quite tasteful and modest - at least, in so far as Ranma was any judge, and he would be the first to admit that interior designing was very much not amongst his list of skills.

Kodachi seemed to intuit that Ranma wasn't one to be impressed by material goods, as she refrained from rattling off the doubtless prestigious, extensive and (probably) ditchwater-dull history of the various ornaments and bric-a-brac decorating the mansion, instead focusing on escorting him to her intended destination.

It took a good five minutes before the two teens finally emerged into the sun of an interior garden. Ironically, this was an environment that Ranma was actually more familiar with; having spent his life on the road and in the wilderness, he had a rather understandable appreciation for nature's beauty, and so, despite his less than stellar opinion of the Kunos, he had to admit that the intricately groomed and impeccably lush gardens, abundant in foliage ranging from black rose bushes to tall, shady trees, were quite beautiful.

Kodachi led him to one particularly impressive tree, clearly groomed since it was a mere sapling for the role of providing shade to anyone seated beneath it, where a blanket had already been laid out across the grass. "Please, sit here, my darling; I shall return with all speed with our repast," she proclaimed proudly.

"Yeah, okay, sure thing," Ranma said, eagerly doing as he'd been told. He watched as the giggling girl pranced away through the gardens, and heaved a quiet sigh of relief. ' _Man, this feels way too weird... still, if she just wants to have a picnic together, I can handle that. Just gotta be polite, make nice, and then get out of here once I've spent enough time here. I can handle that... I've got it all under control,'_ Ranma assured himself, almost believing it the more he said it.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Kodachi was busy throwing together her promised picnic feast for Ranma... well, throwing things together by her standards; in what would have surprised many students of both Furinkan and St. Hebereke's, both of the Kuno children were proficient cooks, although of the two it was definitely Kodachi who honestly enjoyed the activity.

Her brother was too caught up in his "reborn samurai" mentality to admit that he might actually like to do something so menial as craft a meal with his own hands, instead preferring to leave it to the family chef. As she worked, though, she found her gaze drawn to the shelf of "special" ingredients...

Whilst the Kuno family had its roots in a samurai clan, as Tatewaki reminded everyone at the slightest excuse, they also had a dark secret: their bloodline also included that of an Oniwaban ninja, and thusly ninjitsu was as much a family art as the more socially acceptable fighting styles of the samurai.

Whilst Tatewaki shunned that aspect of their heritage, Kodachi embraced it; in addition to how useful such things as sleeping powder, paralysis powder and other poison techniques could be in her Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics battles, she was intimately aware of the reality that her peak at her chosen fighting style would soon have come and gone, and then she would need to move on to other fields. Ninjitsu felt the most natural fit to her, building upon techniques she had already mastered through her youthful combination of gymnastics and martial arts.

' _Hmm... should I? It would be a perfect opportunity to dose him... with a suitable dose of paralysis powder to extend our time together, I could surely win him over...'_ Kodachi mused to herself. She reached for the vial... and then stopped, shaking her head. ' _What am I thinking?! My darling's fiancée is none other than that mercenary, Nabiki Tendo - why am I treating her so seriously?! To use such a gambit is to admit that she can hope to challenge my loveliness, my desirability; I am Kodachi Kuno! I eclipse that money-grubbing peasant as the sun eclipses the moon! I need no such artificial aids to secure my Ranma's heart!'_

Ego winning over pragmatism, Kodachi abandoned her "special" spices and instead focused on putting all of her love and care into the food, confident that it would secure her a foothold upon the path to ultimate victory over Ranma's heart.

* * *

Soon afterwards...

* * *

' _Okay; crazy she may be, but she's also up there with Kasumi in the cooking department,'_ Ranma admitted to himself, currently sucking the last meat from a drumstick bone. He'd never heard the words "duck confit with spicy pickled raisins" before, let alone used in conjunction, but once he'd gotten over the surprise of seeing meat and fruit served together, it'd proven surprisingly tasty.

Of course, Ranma had eaten a lot of... inventive meals over a lifetime spent foraging and scavenging, so when it came to food, "xenophobic" was the last thing to call him. It actually went really well with what Kodachi had proudly called a "Salade Lyonnaise", which seemed a very fancy way of saying "bacon, lettuce and poached eggs salad".

"How was it, Ranma darling? Did you find it to your liking?" Kodachi purred, delicately scooping a poached egg into her mouth with a pair of chopsticks.

"It was delicious, Kodachi. I didn't know you could cook like this," Ranma admitted with an impressed tone to his voice and expression ; no matter their precise relationship, he always believed in complimenting good cooks. If only because he'd learned that doing so could sometimes score you a little extra grub, something he and his pops were always short of.

"Yes, I take great pride in my skills," Kodachi said pridefully, visibly preening herself at the compliment. "I am also highly adept at traditional Japanese fare, of course, but French cuisine just has that... extra special something, wouldn't you say?"

"Can't really say... s'not something I normally eat. But if you can fight as well as you can cook, then no wonder you're such a big shot," Ranma commented, distracted as he inspected his plate for any lingering scraps. The reality of what he'd said sank in only after the words left his mouth. ' _Damn it... smooth move, Saotome.'_

Fortunately, Kodachi laughed merrily at his words. "Indeed! None can hope to challenge the Black Rose of Saint Hebereke in the field of Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics!" she bragged, flicking an invisible speck of food from her skirt.

' _Yeah, it helps when you beat them up before the match... wait a minute...!'_ Ranma fought to keep himself from giving the game away by smiling. "Is that so? Because all I kept hearing about is how nobody's seen you fighting in a long time - you just keep winning by default..."

Kodachi directed a shocked look at her reluctant date. "What?! Where did you hear this slander?" she demanded hotly, leaning in close to Ranma as if to read it from his eyes.

"Is it really slander if it's true? I heard from some girls who go to Saint Hebereke that some people don't even feel it's worth showing up for your matches anymore, as there's never going to be a fight," Ranma replied, doing his best to sound as innocent as possible. It wasn't exactly his strongest suit, but he'd done it more than once before in the past.

...Tricking people was a rather integral part of his martial arts training; he'd grown to accept that a long time ago.

Kodachi visibly twitched, the fire of rage building in her eyes. "Such impudence...!" she hissed.

"Well, you can't really blame them. I mean, you do all the hard work when nobody's there to see, of course they're going to start having doubts," Ranma pointed out, still maintaining as innocent and carefree an attitude as he could. "Which isn't really fair; I mean, think of your poor fans who come to your matches anxious to see their idol perform, and yet they get disappointed when the challenger is a no-show..."

' _Let's see her resist that...'_ Ranma chuckled mentally.

The younger Kuno blinked, face twisting through several expressions as she visibly pondered what Ranma had said. When she smiled triumphantly and burst into a delighted peal of laughter, Ranma knew his efforts had paid off.

"Why, Ranma darling! You are as brilliant as you are handsome! It's true; I have been neglecting my poor fans of late - but no longer! I shall crush the doubts of these naysayers, just as I shall crush Akane Tendo before all the assembled eyes of Saint Hebereke and Furinkan High!" she boasted, laughing proudly.

"I'm sure they can't wait to see you," Ranma replied, grinning at his own cleverness. Now Akane shouldn't have to worry about Kodachi trying another late night ambush.

"I'm certain they can't!" Kodachi boasted. "But enough of such things; we are on a date, after all. Perhaps you would like to meet Mr. Green Turtle, my beloved pet?" she suggested, giving Ranma a hopeful look and fluttering her eyes in an attempt to be winsome.

"Eh... sure? Why not?" Ranma shrugged, couldn't hurt to humor her a bit more after she'd basically fallen for his plan hook, line and sinker. "Lead the way."

Kodachi sprang up with a beaming grin of radiant delight. "How wonderful! His pond isn't too far from here; I'm sure you'll make the best friends!" she chirped, already spinning flamboyantly around and striding off through the garden.

Ranma watched her go, shaking his head, before he set off after her.

' _Weird girl... but maybe, she's not all bad? Who'da thought she'd have a turtle for a pet, though? That's actually almost cute...'_

* * *

That evening...

* * *

Akane stared at Nabiki as if she'd just sprouted an extra head, as she had been doing ever since the youngest of the Tendos had found out about what transpired at school that morning in her absence. "I don't believe it. You've always been willing to do stupid stunts for cash before, but seriously?!" she asked incredulously. "You _**sold**_ Ranma? And to the crazy girl who attacked me last night? What kind of fiancée are you?!"

Beside her, Ryoga stared at Nabiki with equal incredulity, wondering for an instant if maybe his desire for revenge on Ranma was superfluous with a fiancée like this...

"Firstly, I _**rented**_ Ranma to Kodachi, not sold him," Nabiki primly corrected her little sister, still unphased even as she waited for Ranma to get back so they could put this little 'incident' behind them. "Secondly, like I keep saying, it was an accident!"

"An' it ain't gonna happen again, right, Nabiki?" interjected a third void, distinctively masculine, tired and unamused.

The two sisters (and one Eternally Lost Boy) looked up from their prior staring contest at Ranma, who was standing at the entrance to the living room, visibly bedraggled, scuffed, and... _damp?_

"What happened to you?" Akane asked, dumbfounded, had Ranma gone off to fight at a zoo or something?.

"Oh, just spent the afternoon playing with Mr. Green Turtle," Ranma drawled sarcastically, brushing off some of the grime he'd managed to acquire.

"A turtle did that?" Nabiki blurted, looking at the rips in Ranma's shirt, the bruises on his arms and the scabbed-over scratches seemingly covering his exposed skin.

"It turns out that Kodachi's beloved pet, with the cutesy name and junk, is actually _a 20ft-long_ _ **alligator**_!" Ranma shouted dramatically, his voice rising as he waved his arms for emphasis.

"I was lucky to get out of there with my skin intact! So, if you don't mind, I'm going to go and have a bath. I'll see you all tomorrow," he stated flatly, and then began marching off without even waiting for a reply.

Ryoga wisely kept his tongue in his mouth, although he couldn't resist smirking at the sight of his hated rival having gone through the wringer. Akane directed a flat look at her sister, whilst Nabiki hung her head, the unfamiliar and distinctly unwelcome sensation of guilt writhing in her guts like a nest of eels. She'd screwed up with her fiancé, and she knew it. She just hoped she could fix things...

* * *

The evening before the Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics match...

* * *

A week came and went with surprising speed. To Nabiki's private relief, Ranma turned out to not hold a grudge for particularly long - a stark contrast to his rival, who, even if he was careful to act the part of the humble penitent during his stay at the dojo, had resentment for his past losses to Ranma visibly seeping from every pore.

To Ranma's self-admitted surprise, his little effort to goad Kodachi away from her usual dirty trickery had seemingly worked; they rarely saw Kuno's little sister, and when she did poke her nose in, it was to make some attempt at flirting with Ranma, usually offering him bento boxes.

Nabiki would have preferred if Kodachi would stop flirting with her fiancé, thank you very much, but she knew it wasn't Ranma's fault. Frankly, she marveled that Kodachi didn't seem to realize the way that Ranma had taken to open cautiousness around the female Kuno, treating her like an unexploded bomb... but then, Tatewaki had a knack for ignoring what he disliked about reality too.

Besides, getting free French cuisine was almost enough to make up for that little annoyance... especially since Kodachi was willing to spring for 'Saotome sized servings' - as Nabiki come to consider the amount of food needed to feed Ranma and Genma - and Ranma in turn was happy to share with his fiancée. Especially if she gave him a wide-eyed, almost tearful look.

For the entire week, Akane remained at home, working tirelessly with Ryoga. Although she griped about how this was going to affect her scholastic ranking, especially when Ranma brought her home a fresh batch of homework each night, she knuckled down and attacked her lessons with diligence.

Privately, Nabiki suspected that she was reveling in the chance to get serious martial arts training, especially from a teacher who had come the closest of anyone she'd seen so far to matching Ranma's skill level.

Now, it was the evening before the day of the big match, and with dinner complete, Akane was putting on a demonstration of her new skills for the family. Everybody had piled into the dojo and taken up seats on the floor around its walls, with Akane in the proverbial center-stage.

Clad in a yellow leotard, Akane flung a pair of gymnast's clubs high into the air, letting the spinning pair soar almost to the ceiling before they dropped perfectly back into her waiting hands - a far cry from the wild toss of her first attempt, so long ago! She strutted and struck a pose, twirling the clubs in rapid arcs around her palms, before shifting to another pose.

"Wow, she's really gotten better!" Nabiki marveled, watching as her previously rather... bullish sister danced and sprang around the dojo like a graceful deer.

"Yeah! Ryoga, you said you knew how to teach her martial arts rhythmic gymnastics - you never said anything about being a miracle worker," Ranma joked, clapping his rival on the shoulder.

Akane promptly whirled on her heels and flung her clubs at Ranma, who somehow managed to leap nearly a meter off the ground from having been seated flat on the ground, letting them pass under his now out-spread legs and punch right into the wall behind him. No sooner had Ranma hit the floor standing than Akane was on him again, this time deploying a gymnastic ribbon like a whip. With deft flicks of her wrist she turned the twirling silk into a makeshift weapon, sending it cracking at the Saotome heir's feet. He sprang away as she lashed out again and again, dodging her strikes with a series of acrobatic flips, twirls and similar feats before he sprang at the wall and leapt up to the ceiling, using the traditional struts from where the panels fit together as hand- and foot-holds to scurry across it like a giant spider.

Below, Akane smirked, twirling her ribbon in a tight corkscrew spiral. "Not bad, am I? I'm going to show Kodachi a thing or two - but first, you come down from there!"

She followed her words with a barrage of clubs, Ranma twisting to evade each in turn as the four hammered into the roof to either side of him, forcing him to drop to the floor in an acrobatic somersault. No sooner had he landed than Akane threw a hoop at him, which he deftly caught.

"You and me, Ranma; we're going to have a little match! That's the best way I can put my training into practice before the big match tomorrow!" Akane challenged, snapping her ribbon like a whip for emphasis.

"Okay, if that's what you want," Ranma replied casually, flipping the hoop up so it landed edgewise on the tip of his index finger, spinning in place like a top. "But are you really sure about this?"

"What, are you scared you're gonna lose, Ranma?" Akane mocked him, grinning wickedly. "Don't worry, I won't hurt you too much."

"...Alright. Just remember, you asked for this," Ranma noted dryly, sending the spinning hoop flying with a twitch of his finger before he stood up.

The two teens eyed each other, staring each other down with total silence. Akane was visibly trembling with excitement, clearly eager at the prospect of potentially avenging her long-ago defeat when Ranma had first arrived.

Ranma, on the other hand, was like a still pond; inscrutable to everyone except maybe his father, who saw no reason to elucidate on what he saw in Ranma's mind. The two began to circle each other, spinning around like counterweights as they prepared for who would launch the first strike.

In the distant future, they would marvel over just how capricious fate could be. They would even manage to laugh at it. But right at the moment, when Akane's total focus on Ranma resulted in her stepping on that little blue gymnast's ball and it slid under her unprepared foot, the girl's joint audibly popping before she went tumbling face-first to the floor? There was nothing funny about it.

"Akane?!" Ranma blurted, immediately darting closer; she wasn't exactly his favorite Tendo, but that didn't mean he was heartless!

Akane twisted, lifting herself up to direct a teary-eyed look at her former opponent. "It-it hurts!" she sobbed.

Chaos promptly broke out in the Tendo Dojo as Akane's family rushed to her side. Fortunately, Kasumi was quite familiar with handling basic medical care for her tomboyish youngest sister, and she gently yet firmly took charge; Ranma and Ryoga were drafted to carry Akane off to her room as Nabiki fetched the first aid kit, whilst Genma stayed behind to keep the sobbing, borderline hysterical Tendo patriarch under control.

Once Akane was on her bed, and Nabiki had brought the first aid kit, Kasumi began examining her, gently running her fingers across Akane's ankle even as the youngest Tendo bit back a whimper. "It'll be alright, Akane; it's just a sprain. But it's a pretty nasty one; I'm going to have to bandage it," Kasumi stated, before holding out her hand. Nabiki promptly clicked open the kit and withdrew a roll of cloth bandages, which Kasumi began to wrap around Akane's ankle with practiced ease.

"There we are, all done..." Kasumi declared once she was finished. "But I'm afraid you won't be fighting on that any time soon, Akane."

"What?! But the match is tomorrow!" Akane protested weakly, giving Kasumi a look of betrayal.

"I'm sorry, Akane, but this is going to take at least a week, minimum, before you'll recover!" Kasumi scolded her, unphased and unmoved.

"You are such a klutz, Akane. Tripping so badly on your own ball... talk about humiliating," Nabiki sighed; all because Akane wanted to square off against Ranma. Nabiki could sense a theme here.

Akane's cheeks burned red with shame and rage. "I can't let Kodachi beat me like this! I'll be the laughing stock of the school!" Stubbornly, she swung her legs out over the edge of the bed and tried to stand... only to collapse backwards hissing in pain at the slightest pressure.

"See? You can't even stand on it, Akane; fighting is out of the question," Kasumi declared, handing down her judgment with all the authority of her faux-matriarch status entitled her to. "If it's that important, they'll just have to find somebody to substitute for you."

"Pft! It's hardly that easy!" Akane protested. "I mean, where are we going to find some girl who knows martial arts, is good at gymnastics, and looks good in a leotard?" she asked rhetorically.

Then, after her own words sank in, she let out a quiet "oh!" of realization, visibly lighting up as something occurred to her.

Ranma's skin prickled as Akane suddenly looked at him. "Akane... why are you looking at me that way, Akane~?" He asked warily.

"Ranma... you could substitute for me in the match tomorrow!" Akane exclaimed.

"Forget it!" Ranma snapped back immediately. "I ain't putting on no leotard and prancing around in front of the whole school like an idiot!"

"But it's got to be you! You're the only strong female martial artist left in Furinkan who can fight Kodachi!" Akane pushed, attempting some flattery even if it pained her to do so.

"I. Am. A. GUY! I'm not going to turn into a girl for some match I ain't even a part of! If beating Kodachi is so important to the Furinkan martial arts gymnasts, then they should have trained better so they could handle her!" Ranma snarled, folding his arms across his chest in the X-shape of batsu to emphasize his displeasure at the idea.

Akane wracked her brains desperately, trying to find a way to convince him. Unfortunately, she knew that she wasn't the best with words, and to make things worse, Ranma kind of had a point - this match had nothing to do with him on any real level. Finally, she sent a pleading look towards her sister, wordlessly begging her to convince Ranma to go along with it.

Nabiki's gaze flickered back and forth between her sister and her fiancé as she weighed up the odds. In the end, though, family love won out. ' _Alright...but you're going to owe me big time for this, little sister,'_ the middle Tendo thought to herself.

She tapped on Ranma's shoulders, and when her fiancé turned to look at her, she hit him with her best "cute innocent girl" look, opening her eyes as wide as she possibly could and sticking out her bottom lip into an adorable little pout, if she did say so herself. "Please, Ranma? For me?"

' _Ah, goddammit; that's no fair, Nabiki!'_ Ranma wailed in the privacy of his mind. How was a guy supposed to say no to a girl looking at him like that, especially his fiance?! This was _**cheating**_!

Not to say that Ranma didn't try. Honestly, he did; he turned away from Nabiki repeatedly, but each time, Nabiki just kept easing her way back into his line of vision. Finally, after five minutes of this cat and mouse routine, his resolve was completely exhausted, and he slumped in defeat. "...Alright, fine, I'll do it," he grumbled softly.

Akane let out a wordless cheer of relief at that. "Thank you, Ranma! I promise, I'm going to owe you for this!"

"And I'll make sure that she pays you back," Nabiki promised, shooting Akane a quick stare. "Now, we all know you can fight, but do you need to practice tonight?"

"I shouldn't think he would; he's been spying on me and Ryoga all through the week," Akane interjected. "Ranma; what's the most important rule of martial arts rhythmic gymnastics?" she asked him.

"Don't attack with bare hands or feet; a non-weapon attack is a foul," Ranma replied instantly.

"See. He knows what to do," Akane chirped. ' _Wow, it feels weird to be grateful to Ranma...'_

"Alright then; we'll just need to have you model a leotard for us, then, and then we'll head off to bed. You'll want to be fresh for the fight tomorrow," Nabiki declared authoritatively.

"Model?" Ranma asked, face twisted into a grimace to match the ill-ease in his voice. 'I don't like the sound of that...'

"Well, yeah; you can't fight a martial arts rhythmic gymnastics match in your usual outfit. You'll be a laughing stock," Nabiki informed him almost pityingly. "So we need to see how Akane's spare leotard fits and if the colors work for you; if not, we can fix that first thing tomorrow."

The clueless and mildly despairing look that Ranma gave her was all the proof she needed that, despite his curse, Ranma was absolutely 100% a boy. Still, he reluctantly nodded, and Nabiki put her hand on his arm. "Come on; we'll do this in the bathroom. Nice and private, okay?"

Ranma nodded again, and Nabiki led him from Akane's room, with Kasumi going her own way in order to grab a tape measure, just in case.

* * *

A few minutes later...

* * *

Nabiki tapped her foot impatiently against the bathroom's tiled floor. "Ranma, come out of there and let me see it," she told the closed door to the actual bath.

"It doesn't fit," Ranma's female voice came drifting sulkily back to her.

"I need to see exactly how it doesn't fit so I can help you get a new one, Ranma. Come on; we're all girls here. We're not going to laugh, I promise," she wheedled.

Silence answered her, seconds ticking uncomfortably past, before the sliding door slowly slid open to reveal Nabiki's mortified fiancé. And seeing him - well, "her" - in the flesh, Nabiki could understand why Ranma was less than thrilled with trying on one of Akane's spare leotards. "Bad fit" was putting it mildly. The fabric visibly bunched around the aquatransexual's waist, so much leaner than Akane's that the leotard hung around Ranma's middle with all the grace of an old potato sack. Above that, fabric clung to his-her newly acquired bosom with merciless strength, visibly too small; it made Nabiki wince to imagine her own breasts being grasped like that, the fabric sawing into mammary tissue with each motion.

Ranma stared at her miserably, finally dragging Nabiki back to reality. "Well, that's obviously not going to fit. So just take it off, Ranma, and we'll take your measurements; that way we can grab you a new one before the match tomorrow," she declared.

"Take it off?" Ranma repeated nervously, one hand reaching up to tug at a shoulder strap in hopes of easing the pressure on her breasts.

"It will make measuring you easier, and I can tell you're just itching to get out of that thing already... honestly, Ranma, why so shy? You've gone topless in front of us before," Nabiki noted wryly.

The boy-turned-girl's cheeks turned so red that Nabiki was half-impressed they didn't burst into flames. "Th-that was different," Ranma protested with feeble warding motions.

"Why?" Nabiki asked sweetly, as if she fully intended to wait for an answer, no matter how long it took.

Ranma fidgeted, somehow blushing even brighter red than before. Hanging her head and refusing to look at either Tendo girl, she mumbled something that nobody could make out.

"What was that, Ranma?" Nabiki asked, stepping closer so she could hear better and reaching out to touch Ranma on the arm.

"...Mnotwearinanythinunnerneaf..." Ranma mumbled again, this time just loud enough for Nabiki to hear.

"Ah..." Nabiki trailed off. That was certainly a reason for the normally shameless Saotome to be blushing like a schoolgirl. She half-turned to face her sister, "Kasumi? Would you mind going and checking on Akane? Ranma and I will be fine on our own."

Nabiki loved her big sister; really, she did. But, in her own private, personal opinion, the kami had passed Kasumi over completely when it came to be time to hand out little gifts like guile.

The eldest Tendo daughter just looked confused before she meekly nodded and wandered off, closing the door behind her. Once she was gone, Nabiki turned back to Ranma. "It's just the two of us now; you feel better?"

"A little..." Ranma hesitantly agreed. "Do you really need to be here?"

"Do you know how to take measurements for clothing fittings?" Nabiki replied lightly. Seeing the unease on her fiancé's face, she tried a different tack. "Look, Ranma; there's nothing to be embarrassed about. I promise you; in this body? You have nothing I haven't seen a hundred times before - I mean, I do have two sisters; we bathe together all the time," she cajoled him.

"Well..." Ranma murmured, fiddling with her shoulder straps again.

"Would it help if I got naked too?" Nabiki suggested, sincere but not entirely immune to the urge to poke a little fun at Ranma's hesitance.

"N-no! No, I'm good, I'll do it!" Ranma blurted out, grabbing the straps and finally sliding them down over her shoulders so she could let the leotard fall to the ground.

' _...I know he's just shy, but... that actually kind of stung,'_ Nabiki noted to herself. But, for the sake of Ranma's obviously fragile ego, she put on a smile instead. "Wow, passing down a chance to see me naked? You really are something else. Can't name any other boys who'd be so chivalrous."

"It's... well, it's not that, but..." Ranma trailed off, unable to articulate either his hesitance or the fact that, actually, he rather would like to see Nabiki naked... and, frankly, not wanting to make himself sound like the horny jerks who used to harass Akane by admitting that. Finally, his overheated brain took mercy on him and he blurted out, "I want it to be special, you know? Not something... sordid... like this."

"Wow, you actually know the word sordid? And you even used it correctly," Nabiki teased... purely as a way to try and cover up the fact her heartbeat had just accelerated like a racecar. 'Kind of corny, but, damn, Ranma, you know how to make a girl feel wanted - and you don't even know it, do you?'

"Hey, I'm not a total moron," Ranma protested, but there was a hint of a smile on her lips as she did so.

"I know, Ranma. Now, just give me five minutes, maybe ten, and then you can put your clothes on, alright?" Nabiki assured her, before she set to work. First, she placed her tape on the midpoint of Ranma's shoulder, and then began drawing it down the front of her fiancé's torso... all the way down, until she had to tap Ranma on the hip. "Spread your legs, please?" she asked simply.

Ranma squirmed, but hesitantly obeyed, allowing Nabiki to loop the tape in between Ranma's legs so that she could bring it up the back. Despite Nabiki's attempts to be professional, she couldn't avoid sneaking a peek at what had been hidden by the aquatransexual's tightly clamped thighs. ' _Huh. The carpet matches the drapes.'_

Once girth had been measured, that left the inseam, which was over and done with easily... And then there was the elephant in the room. Or should that be elephants?

' _How to measure Ranma's breasts without freaking him out? Hmm... ahah!'_

"So, Ranma... after you win this match, what do you say to going on a date?" Nabiki asked lightly.

"Huh?" Ranma repeated, blinking at Nabiki in confusion.

"Well, you're really doing my little sister a huge favor with this... that deserves a special reward. So, I was thinking when this is over, we could go on a date. My treat," Nabiki purred, slipping closer and carefully raising the tape into place.

As she'd hoped, the offer caught Ranma so off-guard that that aquatransexual didn't even notice where Nabiki's hands were hovering. "A date...? ...I'd like that," she agreed after a moment's pause . "Um... but where would we go?"

"You just leave that to me. I'll sort everything out, I promise," Nabiki assured her fiancé, even as she finished taking the last few measurements; luckily, she'd always been good at multitasking. Even in the face of certain...distractions. ' _Wow; I always knew he was stacked; but not this stacked!'_ Pushing that thought down into the black depths of her subconscious, she smiled purposefully and stepped away from him, folding up the tape in her hands. "All done! You can go and get changed back now, Ranma."

Ranma practically fled back into the bathroom proper, leaving Nabiki to sigh softly to herself, although she was smiling as she did so. ' _Shy little thing... we're going to need to work on that at some point...'_

* * *

Shortly afterwards...

* * *

Ryoga frowned suspiciously at his rival, currently wearing his female form. "Just what do you want, Ranma? Why are we in the dojo?"

"Aside from the fact you've been camping in here the past week?" Ranma drawled back, gesturing at Ryoga's sleeping roll and backpack of supplies. "Despite what Akane said... I want to at least try and practice a little before bed. I've never actually used this style, after all..."

"I guess even your arrogance has its limits," Ryoga grunted, smirking at the scowl this prompted from Ranma.

"I suppose I can give you a short demonstration," he decided, before tossing Ranma a pair of gymnast's clubs whilst taking the ribbon for himself.

"Don't get any funny ideas about screwing this up for me, Ryoga," Ranma warned, twirling the clubs around her hands like a pair of nunchaku.

"Why would I bother?" Ryoga pointed out. "I haven't any investment in this match, be it win, lose or draw. I guess maybe it makes me look better if you win, but otherwise, I couldn't care less what happens to you tomorrow!" As he said this, the eternally lost boy lashed out with his ribbon like a whip.

Ranma deftly deflected it with one strike of his club. "Just making sure we understood each other, P-chan!"

"Don't you dare call me that!" Ryoga roared in fury, pulling out the same gymnast's ball that Akane had injured herself on earlier and hurling it at Ranma with the force of a cannonball... only for Ranma to literally bat it back at him with a club like a baseball, causing the high-velocity rubber sphere to slam squarely into Ryoga's face.

The resulting brawl was short, mostly because Ranma had meant what she said about this being just a quick test of her skills before the match. To Ryoga's chagrin, Ranma proved surprisingly adept at picking up the techniques, and was soon handling all the tools with at least as much deftness as Akane had achieved under a week of Ryoga's training.

Inevitably, Ranma declared the spar over and the two went their separate ways, eager to sleep and be ready for tomorrow.

* * *

The day of the big match...

* * *

"Don't forget, girls! The martial arts rhythmic gymnastics tournament against the visiting team from Furinkan High will take place this afternoon at 1 o'clock in the second gymnasium."

As that announcement from the PA echoed through the air, three figures made their way into the gymnasium, one of them clutching a crutch and visibly sulking. "Why am I using this stupid thing, Nabiki? It doesn't hurt that badly anymore."

"You want to convince Kodachi you're genuinely substituting because you're injured, not to try and get out of facing her, right?" Nabiki explained. "Then it helps make you look like you're actually hurt."

"I guess," Akane conceded. "Why did you come with us, anyway?" she asked, giving her elder sister an inquisitive look.

"In case you forgot, my fiancé's the one fighting today. Of course I'm going to come along and watch," Nabiki quipped, smirking as she affectionately petted the redheaded member of their little trio.

"Oh, please," Akane scoffed, rolling her eyes.

"Whatsamatter? Jealous that Ryoga didn't come along to watch you?" Ranma joked.

"As if!" Akane growled. "I mean, yeah, he's not a total creep, I guess, but as far as I'm concerned, he's only just cleared the slate with his tutelage."

Before either of the other teens could continue to needle Akane on her precise relationship with the porcine shifter, who had declared his intent to remain at the Dojo and help Kasumi out before he went back on the road, they were interrupted as Kodachi Kuno materialized and strode briskly towards them.

"Well, well, Ms. Tendo; were you anticipating losing to me that badly?" she tittered.

"Actually, I hurt myself in an accident last night," Akane responded, giving the pompous girl her iciest glare - she could easily believe that this was Kuno's little sister now. "So Furinkan High is having somebody substitute for me."

"This is rather last minute, Ms. Tendo," Kodachi noted, frowning as she did so.

Akane simply shrugged in response. "My accident was last-minute, so we had to make some changes."

"And it's all been discussed and approved with the principle of Saint Hebereke," Nabiki interjected. That was one of the various little errands they'd had to run that morning, along with getting Ranma a proper leotard for the event.

Kodachi sniffed slightly, but didn't protest, instead fixing her attention on Ranma, who forced herself to stay still. "You... I remember you. You're that pigtailed girl from before. I didn't know you practiced martial arts rhythmic gymnastics."

"I'm more of a generalist," Ranma replied neutrally; the less she spoke to Kodachi, the less chance Kuno's sister would have to pick up who Ranma was.

"Well, whatever the case, I do hope you'll be fighting fairly today, won't you?" Kodachi asked sweetly, even as she extended her hand for a polite handshake.

She was completely indifferent to the dirty looks directed at her by a pair of sisters, the phrase 'Look who's talking!' echoing in both their heads.

Surreptitiously, Ranma checked Kodachi's hand for concealed tacks - it was just the sort of low-grade dirty trick that she'd expect of somebody with Kodachi's reputation to pull. And, honestly, she was kind of disappointed to see that she had been right to be cautious. "I'll fight fairly as you do," Ranma replied deadpan,wrapping slender yet steely fingers around Kodachi's wrist and twisting so as to expose her little cheat to the Tendo sisters.

Kodachi's eyes widened as she feigned shock, even placing her free hand against her cheek. "Good heavens! However did those tacks get between my fingers?" she asked with almost genuine sounding innocence.

"Like any of us are going to buy that," Akane huffed as she gave Kodachi a contemptuous sneer.

"Anyway! Where is the challenger's changing room?" Nabiki interjected; she didn't want to risk the chance that Kodachi might decide to attack the weakened Akane just because she could.

"Hm? Ah, yes, I understand; you'll be changing in the west locker room," Kodachi replied, pointing out the direction with her free hand. "Now, if you don't mind?"

"What? Oh, sorry," Ranma replied instinctively as she released her grip on Kodachi's wrist.

The three girls from Furinkan High promptly made their way to the indicated locker room, and despite Akane's sprained ankle, they were soon at the right door, which was confirmed by a sheet of paper taped to it. "Honestly, you can't take your eyes off of that girl for a minute!" Akane scoffed. "You better take care in the ring, Ranma."

"Hey, I'll be fine - nobody's gonna pull the wool over my eyes!" Ranma bragged.

The door swung open... and the last person any of them had expected to see waved a fuzzy great paw in greeting, letting out a grumbling noise that only a panda could make.

"Pop! What are you doing here?" Ranma asked in mild shock.

In answer, the panda-man reached behind himself and presented them with a wooden sign upon which kanji had been scribbled with surprising neatness for somebody who was presumably working with claws: I came to see the fight.

"Really? I wouldn't have thought that this was any interest to you; it's a girl's style," Akane pointed out.

Genma flipped the sign around. I don't like the boy doing girly things. But if he's got to fight in a girl's style, then he better do a decent job of it. Another flip and new kanji were revealed. You had better win this, Ranma.

Nobody was sure how Genma managed to fit three different messages onto a two-sided sign.

Ranma simply scoffed, giving her father a cocky smirk. "Don't worry, old man; I intend to win this fight!"

"Which means you need to dress the part," Nabiki interjected, brandishing the bag that contained the fruit of her little shopping excursion that morning. She gave Genma a look that the transformed panda took as a sign to leave them be, and he promptly trundled off.

Ranma eyed it as if it were a poisonous snake, and then reluctantly took it from Nabiki's hand. "Right..." she sighed. This was the part she was looking forward to the least about all this...

* * *

Time to fight!

* * *

The gymnasium was crowded, with students from both Furinkan High and Saint Hebereke crammed into temporary seating around a combat sports arena. Noisy chatter filled the air before the referee entered the ring (well, square) and raised her hand. "Good afternoon, everyone!" she boomed, her microphone broadcasting her words through the school's PA system. "And welcome to the Saint Hebereke vs. Furinkan High martial arts rhythmic gymnastics tournament!"

Cheers and applause broke out from all sides, the mixed ranks of Furinkan High contrasting the exclusively female population of Saint Hebereke.

The announcer took over, speaking into her own microphone as the cheering died down. " _ **If we may have your attention please? The rhythmic gymnastics match will begin at any moment."**_

The referee took over again. "And the contestants are ready!" she announced.

With carefully planned timing, one of the doors to the gymnasium swung open as a spotlight lit up, enveloping two female figures in brilliant luminescence. Standing proudly as she could, Ranma strode down the walkway to the ring, clad in a two-toned long-sleeved legless pink leotard and with Nabiki at her side - Akane and Genma instead taking up seats in the front row on the Furinkan High side of the gymnasium.

From his own seat at the front of the Saint Hebereke's side, the sole male in a sea of females gaped as if he'd been gutpunched, eyes bulging in shock. "Wha-what the?!" Tatewaki Kuno spluttered. ' _What in Jigoku is Ranma Saotome doing here?! Where is the beautiful Akane Tendo?!'_

" _ **The Furinkan High challenger is entering the ring!"**_

Upon reaching the corner of the ring, Ranma leapt straight up into the air, soaring from floor to just shy of the ceiling in one tremendous spring. At the apex of her jump, she spread her limbs to form a star-shape, ceiling lights snapping to life all around her before she did a forward flip, dropping neatly into the rin to land on her toes in a picture-perfect pose, raising her arms over her head and turning back and forth as the audience cheered her.

Tatewaki's eye twitched, especially as he spotted Akane and Genma the panda sitting over on the other side of the arena.

" _ **She's certainly showing a lot of spirit! Will she be this confident once the fight begins?"**_ The announcer speculated. " _ **Only time will tell!"**_

Moments later, music began to play from hidden speakers, multiple ceiling lights flashing into life as a trapeze artist's swing began descending into view, with a familiar female figure perched with bird-like grace upon it.

" _ **And here comes the champion!"**_

Clad in her familiar green leotard, Kodachi smirked and kicked out one leg, bending into a series of sultry poses as fireworks flashed into life behind her.

"Where did she get those?" Akane muttered to herself, ignored by the cheering crowd around her. Even many of the Furinkan High students were cheering... mostly boys, for reasons that were depressingly obvious to the female half of the visiting students.

Despite what Akane had half-suspected, Kodachi rode the swing down to the ring's canvass floor without incident, stepping gracefully from her perch to stand opposite to Ranma. She smiled sweetly, even as her eyes glimmered with eagerness to begin unleashing pain upon her foe.

"Smite the pigtailed wench, my sister! This time, I cheer for you!" Tatewaki called from his seat in the front row.

"Why, brother dear," Kodachi replied, sparing a surprised but seemingly genuinely happy glance at her elder sibling.

"That's Kuno-sempai's older brother?" asked one of the Hebereke girls.

"I think I'm in love," swooned another.

" _ **And here they are, ladies and gentlemen!"**_ cried the announcer, her words the signal for the referee to begin introducing the two combatants.

"In the red corner, from Saint Hebereke School for Girls... Kodachi Kuno!"

Kodachi laughed uproariously, whipping out her ribbon and performing her trademark spiraling blizzard of black rose petals, which fluttered gracefully around the gymnasium. Her actions were greeted with cheers and shouts of encouragement from her schoolmates... and no few Furinkan schoolboys.

"And in the blue corner, from Furinkan High...! Um..." the referee paused, and then turned to Ranma. "What's your name, challenger?"

"It's Ranko Tendo," Ranma replied. She'd originally planned on just using her real name, figuring that nobody would identify the two different forms as the same people even with that name, but Nabiki had almost burst a blood vessel when she'd heard that. Hastily, Ranma had agreed to change it, and they'd decided on "Ranko Tendo" for the simplicity - it'd be easier for them all to remember.

"Ranko Tendo? Akane has another sister?" One of the Furinkan High students asked.

"Don't be a moron; she's obviously Akane's cousin!" another scolded him.

Kuno simply scoffed at the gullibility of the 'lower classes'. ' _As if the likes of Ranma Saotome could possibly hope to present themselves as kin to the beauteous Akane Tendo! My sister, forgive me for wishing you ill when I heard you were facing my beloved... and smite this one with all your might!'_

Kodachi narrowed her eyes at her opponent. ' _Ranko Tendo, eh? And here I thought Ms. Tendo lacked the proper guile to be a worthy foe for the Black Rose of Saint Hebereke...'_

Despite the unfamiliarity of the redhead representing their school, the Furinkan students still managed to cheer her on, clinging to the hope that this time, they might win a match against Saint Hebereke.

Moments later, the referee spoke up to both combatants. "Alright, girls, to the center of the ring," she declared, beckoning the two together. "Now shake hands," she commanded.

Gazes locked, the two girls reached out and clasped hands freely, with Kodachi leaning forward and causing Ranma to meet her midway. "Don't worry... I'll make this quick," the younger Kuno gloatedly whispered.

"Funny... I was thinking the same thing," Ranma hissed back, squeezing Kodachi's hand until she winced. A petty little act, but one that brought a smile to Ranma's face.

"Alright, girls, break it up," the referee interjected, causing Ranma and Kodachi to release each other's hands and take several large steps away. "Now... fight!" she called, with the announcer striking the bell for emphasis.

Faster than Ranma had anticipated, Kodachi sprang into action; twirling her ribbon in a horizontal spiral to send a strong gust of wind filled with blinding black rose petals slamming into Ranma's face. As the redheaded aquatransexual instinctively covered her eyes with a forearm, Kodachi shot forward and thrust a gymnast's club into Ranma's stomach, forcing the breath from Ranma's lungs in a great "oof!" of shock and sending her staggering several steps back, almost falling to one knee before she managed to catch herself.

Kodachi laughed gleefully at having drawn the metaphorical first blood. "How very careless of you!" she mockingly chided her opponent.

Ranma glowered at Kodachi. "Yer gonna pay for that..." she promised with a snarl, drawing a white rope knotted at two ends and twirling it like a makeshift flail. She wasn't actually sure what role that normally served in gymnastics routines, but she was confident that she could use it to bring some pain to her opponent.

Kodachi simply laughed again, twirling her ribbon in elegant spirals with one hand whilst the other gripped her club. A flick of her wrist, and the ribbon lashed out like a whip, cracking as it snapped towards Ranma's face.

Ranma weaved aside, letting it sail harmlessly past her head, and charged forward, hoping to get inside of the ribbon's arc and turn its length into a disadvantage for Kodachi. She swung her rope-flail at Kodachi's ribs, only to find it deflected by a deft flick of Kodachi's club.

" _ **Aren't they eager?! But just to recap the rules for you all; the only legal attacks are those made with tools! Bare hands are strictly forbidden! There's no time limit, and you lose if you are knocked out or land outside of the ring!"**_

Emboldened by her success, Kodachi jabbed out with her club, trying to score a solid hit on Ranma's stomach. Instead, Ranma countered by simultaneously dodging and using the rope to lash around Kodachi's wrist. Smirking, Ranma pivoted and put all her considerable strength into a half-pull, half-throw, turning Kodachi's own momentum against her and sending her flying out of the ring like a human rocket.

" _ **Incredible! Could this be the shortest match in Saint Hebereke's history?! Challenger Tendo has just thrown Champion Kuno from the ring by using her rope as a lever!"**_

Ranma had a moment to enjoy the visible shock on Kodachi's face as she twisted around, looking back at Ranma with startled eyes from an upside down position... right before Kodachi smirked and almost contemptuously flicked out her ribbon. It wrapped itself around a corner-post like a grapnel, arresting her in mid-flight and allowing her to literally pull herself back into the ring, where she landed atop that same corner-post with a graceful flip.

" _ **And what a comeback! So calm, so cool, so collected! No wonder the Black Rose of Saint Hebereke reigns supreme as the champion of martial arts rhythmic gymnastics in the Tokyo area!"**_

The Black Rose of Saint Hebereke sniffed dismissively. "I can certainly see the resemblance you Tendo girls have! You possess your cousin Akane's brutish strength!" she scoffed, her nose tilted up with a dismissive air.

"Hey!" Ranma and Akane snapped indignantly at the comparison.

"Very well, if it's brutishness you want..." Kodachi dropped her ribbon and club as she nodded to her second, who threw her a gymnast's ball and a rope like Ranma's. "Then I will be happy to oblige!"

She launched her ball at Ranma's feet, forcing Ranma to step lively to avoid being hit by a rib-rattling ricochet. But that action alone put Ranma off-balance, enough that Kodachi had the opening she needed to dart forward and slap Ranma clearly across the cheek with her rope-flail.

Pain exploded in Ranma's head, the coppery taste of blood filling her mouth as her cheek cut itself on her teeth, which themselves shook from the impact. Dazed by the blow, she stumbled back, tripping over her own feet and narrowly catching herself on the ropes that made up the walls of the ring.

"Ran-ko! Are you okay?!" Nabiki gasped, hurrying to her fiancé(e)'s side. To her relief, Ranma shook her head, spat a mouthful of blood on the floor beside Nabiki, and then nodded gingerly.

"Yeah, I'm okay... never been hit so hard by a rope before," 'Ranko' admitted as she took stock of any other potential injuries.

Glancing over at the laughing Kodachi, Nabiki narrowed her eyes. "That's because that's not a rope - that's a steel bar designed to look like a folded rope! Referee, that's a foul!" she protested.

"Sorry, but that's a legal tool, Miss," the referee responded with the bored and disinterested air of one who's had the conversation a thousand times.

"What?!" Akane and Nabiki protested in unison.

"You can't be serious! There's no way that sort of dirty trick could be legal!" Nabiki added.

"I'm sorry, but there's nothing in the rulebook prohibiting it," the referee replied coolly.

Ignoring the bickering girls, Ranma pushed herself off of the ropes, glowering at Kodachi. "I should have known you'd find some way to use dirty tricks in this fight..."

"Dirty tricks? Me?" Kodachi replied, looking as innocent as could be. "As the referee said, my tools are perfectly legal."

"Yeah, and how much did that cost you?" Ranma jabbed, before snatching up a pair of clubs and charging at Kodachi. The harsh clatter of wood on steel echoed through the gymnasium before Ranma managed to deftly knock the disguised steel cudgel from Kodachi's fingers, sending it spinning off across the floor.

When she tried to strike Kodachi herself, however, the Black Rose evaded with a series of backflips. "Clubs!" she snapped, and her second promptly threw them to her. "Let's see how you deal with this!" she hissed, before flinging herself back into the fray.

" _ **Wow, they're going at it tooth and nail! It's an incredible match, ladies and gentleman - and a real treat too! Almost all of the champion's recent challengers have had to forfeit due to sudden illness; it's good to see that the Black Rose hasn't lost her touch with all those free wins!"**_

Ranma smirked as she watched Kodachi's eye twitching at that little comment. A brief pleasure that faded in a hurry when Kodachi jabbed a club at her face - and it suddenly erupted in a bristling array of spikes! Ranma narrowly dodged that thrust, and then had to use both of her own clubs to deflect a second club as it jabbed at her waist.

"Referee! Those clubs are spiked! That's gotta be a foul!" Nabiki protested.

At that very instant, the spikes suddenly vanished from Kodachi's clubs, even as the referee looked her way. "What spikes? I don't see any spikes," she replied.

"She was using them just a second ago! She's got them on a trigger hidden in the hilts!" Nabiki insisted.

"Unless you have proof, don't go making wild accusations," the referee said as she gave Nabiki a disapproving look.

Nabiki scowled at her. "And people call me a cheating bitch..."

Realizing from the conversation on the sidelines that she couldn't count on anyone coming to her aid, Ranma flipped backwards from Kodachi to put some distance between them, snatching up a fallen ribbon as she went. "Fine, then; two can play at that game!" she snarled as she landed on one of the side-ropes, lashing out with her ribbon... not at Kodachi, but at the announcer's desk!

" _ **Oh, my! Challenger Tendo has commandeered a desk!"**_

Kodachi's eyes went wide as Ranma swung the desk at her like a flail, dropping her clubs in her haste to avoid the massive body of wood as it swung through the air where she had been standing just moments ago. She leapt for her ribbon and sprang up onto the corner post, sending the silk streaming into the audience, where it wrapped around Kuno and brought him sailing from his seat into the ring.

" _ **Champion Kuno counters with her own brother!"**_

Ranma flinched, but the desk was already in mid-swing; Kuno slammed into headfirst, splitting it clean in half as both of them fell to the ring's surface.

" _ **What a clever idea! Isn't the Champion lucky that brothers are a legal tool in this tournament?!"**_

"Now this is just getting stupid!" Nabiki protested, but, alas, nobody listened to her.

Ranma hopped down from the ropes and over to Tatewaki's side. "Kuno? You okay?"

A dull groan emerged from Ranma's senior classman... before his eyes snapped open in a hateful glare. "You wretch!" he spat, scrambling to his feet before he whipped his trusty bokken from his side and struck out at Ranma all in one swift motion.

" _ **Ooh, and the Champion's brother seems pretty angry! Not surprising when he just took a desk to the face! He's attacking the challenger over and over - but oh! She's too quick and nimble for him; he can't lay a finger on her!"**_

"C'mon, Kuno, it's not my fault!" Ranma protested, dodging, ducking and flipping around the senior's whirling bokken.

"Vile miscreant, stand still and be smote!" Tatewaki spat... right before a gymnast's ball suddenly bounced past him and exploded like a grenade!

Kodachi's maniacal laughter shrieked from her corner. "That's it, brother dear! Show her the might of the Kuno clan!" she cackled before lopping a second explosive ball, and then a third, which gave way to a whole barrage of bouncing grenades.

" _ **And that's the Champion's trademark bomb-ball technique! Few are the challengers who can stand up to her when she starts lobbing those around! Isn't it lucky that they're a legal tool in martial arts rhythmic gymnastics?!"**_

"And people accuse me of running rigged games," Nabiki grumbled to herself, watching the action with wide eyes. She winced as Ranma narrowly evaded sword strikes and explosions, darting and weaving across the arena with acrobatic twists and contortions that made her own spine tingle in sympathy.

Of course, such a chaotic battle couldn't last forever. In the end, Tatewaki was the first to be eliminated, as an unluckily timed backstroke caused him to strike one of Kodachi's bomb balls as it neared his back.

The explosion caught him squarely, propelling him forward like a rocket; Ranma narrowly avoided being caught as Kuno flew through the air and landed heavily on the floor outside the ring with all the grace of a drunken seagull, his bokken clattering to a halt next to him.

" _ **Oooh, and that had to hurt! The Champion's brother is down!"**_

"You wicked, wicked girl!" Kodachi screeched, her outrage only _half_ faked for anyone paying attention. "How dare you do that to my brother?!"

"Me?! You're the one who was throwing bombs everywhere!" Ranma protested with an 'are you kidding me' look - then ducked as a hoop came flying through the air right at her head... which turned out to be fortuitous when the hoop sliced clean through one of the corner poles! "The fuck?!" Ranma screamed.

"You won't get away with hurting him like that! Have another Razor Hoop!" Kodachi cried, twirling said item around her wrist before flinging it at Ranma like a giant flying buzzsaw.

This time, Ranma dodged it by leaping over it, landing neatly on an intact corner pole.

Nabiki saw that as her moment. "Ranko!" she called out, before throwing her fiancé a pair of gymnast's clubs.

Ranma flicked the cudgels from the air into her hands with a pair of deft kicks, scowling at her foe. "Fine! If that's the way you want it, then I'll be happy to beat some sense into you!" she vowed, twirling the clubs first in rapid circles around in her hands and then in a complicated choreography around her torso.

"Wow, incredible! She's using the clubs like they were nunchaku!" one of the Furinkan High students marveled.

Kodachi wasn't impressed. Instead, she scoffed and beckoned to her second, who tossed a pair of clubs to Kodachi in turn. "How utterly ridiculous... I am the rising star of high school martial arts rhythmic gymnastics," she proclaimed, striking a pose with her clubs. "The beautiful young flower of Saint Hebereke. The one called the Black Rose." She crossed her arms in front of her chest. "Watch, then... the dreaded attack of..." she swept her arms through the air to trace a half-circle from straight above her head, "1000 Clubs!"

And with that she exploded forward, charging forward and attacking Ranma with a blurred flurry of strikes, forcing Ranma to react desperately to keep the onslaught at bay. The air was filled with the wooden clack of club on club, with the watching crowd cheering the combatants on.

" _ **It's amazing! It's as if the Champion is striking with ten or twenty clubs all at once!"**_

"Ranko!" Nabiki cried out, before tossing a gymnast's ball high into the air above Ranma's head. The redheaded aquatransexual sprang for it and spiked it at Kodachi's hand, hitting her squarely in the wrist and... scattering a cloud of smaller clubs?!

" _ **Incredible! The Champion WAS using ten or twenty clubs simultaneously!"**_

Landing back in the center of the ring, Ranma looked at the clubs rolling across the mat and shook her head in disbelief. "Damn... that is so impractical and so much hard work to pull it off successfully, I think that actually goes through cheating and right out the other side!"

"Who do you think you are, calling me a cheater?!" Kodachi snapped indignantly.

"I'm Ran- **ko** Tendo of the School of Anything Goes Martial Arts," Ranma scoffed in reply, narrowly managing to catch herself on the naming front. "And if I'm calling you out for cheating, then you have to be one truly dirty-dealing, double-crossing, back-stabbing _**bitch**_ ," she drawled, complete with a patronizing expression.

At that choice of words and condescension, Kodachi saw **red**. "How _**dare**_ you talk to me in such a manner!? You impudent witch, I'll show you!" she squalled, and charged at Ranma with her remaining club gripped tightly.

Unfortunately for her... that was when she lost the match. In her anger, she failed to take notice of the clubs still scattered underfoot, and in one of karma's little jokes, she stepped right on one... which slid under her foot, causing her to stumble and pitch forward, turning her charge into an uncontrolled tumble.

Which Ranma instantly seized upon. The last thing that Kodachi saw for a while was the wicked grin on her redheaded opponent's face, followed by an up-close and personal view of a gymnast's club as "Ranko Tendo" brought it around in a double-handed swing that would have made a baseball talent scout very interested indeed. The impact sent her soaring into the air, up and over the ropes... now, prior to the match's beginning, Kodachi had secretly hidden several of her strongest and stealthiest followers under the ring, allowing her to direct them to move it with a whistle. This would ensure that no matter how skilled her challenger was, they would never be able to defeat her with a ring out.

A pity she had failed to consider what would happen if she weren't able to whistle. What lingering shards of consciousness she had were dashed from her when she hit the gymnasium floor with all the grace and poise of a sack of potatoes lobbed from a catapult. Still, at least being unconscious meant she was unable to hear the announcer.

" **What an incredible turn of events! In a stunning upset, the challenger from Furinkan wins by a solid ring-out! The winner is Ranko Tendo!"**

The announcer struck the bell three times, and the gymnasium erupted as the Furinkan High students cheered as though their lives depended on it. In the center of the ring, a panting Ranma drew herself up as straight as she could, and put on a victory pose for her adoring public.

* * *

That evening...

* * *

Nabiki sat on one of the larger, flatter stones near the koi pond in the garden, looking up at the stars. What a day today had been... still, at least this mess with Kodachi was all over.

"You there! Nabiki Tendo!"

Nabiki blinked, and then her eyes widened asw something came flying at her. She barely managed to catch it in time, and stared dumbfounded as she realized it was a bouquet of black roses. Looking up, she saw that Kodachi was standing in her garden, staring at her with icy determination. "What do you want?" she asked, in her best "Ice Queen of Furinkan High" voice.

Her displeasure rolled off of Kodachi like water off of a duck's back. "Please deliver those to my darling Ranma Saotome, Nabiki Tendo," she said, before pointing an accusatory finger at her. "And heed this warning! One day, I will free my beloved from his engagement to you and claim him as my own! Even if I must use force to do so! You had best remember that! And now, I bid thee adieu..."

With her trademark hysterical shriek of laughter, Kodachi bounded away into the night, leaving behind a stunned Nabiki Tendo. "...What the hell?" she asked herself, too stunned to even care about her reputation. "And I used to think Tatewaki was a nuisance..."

* * *

 **Chapter End & Closing Notes**

* * *

And so, at long last, we reach the end of this chapter! I considered splitting it into two, in order to emulate the rough division of this story into three episodes in canon, but I felt I would be cheating you readers after so long between updates. So I hope that you enjoyed this! I'll try to have the next one out sooner.

And what is the next one? Why, none other than the Martial Arts Figure Skating arc, followed by the introduction of our favorite Chinese Amazon! Things are going to start getting serious(ly weird) for Ranma and Nabiki soon!


	9. Fire Wrapped In Ice!

Authors Notes: Thank you to everyone for your patience, and your warm welcome of the previous chapter despite the delays! Hopefully, future chapters will come out much quicker than the last! ...Assuming real life stops throwing curveballs at me like my father being hit by a falling tree and having his knee broken so badly it literally reversed the joint...had to have him airlifted to hospital, and he's still being surgically patched up... he was damn lucky he kept the leg, you know?

Tribun: Well, in fairness, it's less like Nabiki swings that way and more that she was in a position where she couldn't help but notice, y'know?

Digital Dragon Productions: To be honest, I actually did consider having Akane be the one to face off against Kodachi. I didn't think she'd win, and frankly I was worried about how to make the fight scene "pay off" - Akane got a LOT better in the previous chapter, but she's still a hotheaded, impulsive fighter, and Kodachi is an excellent tactician and dirty schemer. Akane definitely might have had the chance to prevail in a straight fight, but Kodachi wouldn't give her one, and I feel she'd have beaten Akane pretty readily... even if it's only by having Akane be disqualified once the youngest Tendo loses her temper and straight-up punches Kodachi's lights out. Of course, that wasn't such a big deal here, so... yeah, ultimately, I went with what felt right, and I'm sorry.

Jack Inqu: Being fair, Ranma actually DOES call everybody out on their shit in canon, especially Akane. It's just that nobody ever listens to him and admits they're wrong, especially when he's calling out Akane.

Shador: Ah... good point... that's a legitimate plot hole. I guess I was thinking that Ranma got splashed and escaped in the chaos without Kodachi seeing his female form, but now I don't remember why I wrote that line, I'm afraid...

* * *

 _ **Chapter 9: Fire Wrapped In Ice!**_

* * *

Despite some fairly common slander around Furinkan High School, albeit never uttered where she could theoretically hear it, Nabiki Tendo did have interests outside of making money. She actually had many such interests, including shopping, reading manga and watching anime, swimming, and playing tennis. Ice skating wasn't one of her favorite activities, but she enjoyed it enough that she had figured a nice Monday afternoon skating with her new fiancé would make a pleasant date.

Especially given it would be an excuse for them to have their arms around each other in public, which she hoped would at least make it up a little for whatever he had suffered whilst on his "date" with the crazed Kodachi Kuno a week ago.

It was a solid plan... unfortunately, reality decided to take that as a personal affront. And things had gone so well, too! She and Ranma had run into Kikuko and Ryonami, a genuine happy accident, she had paid for both their time on the rink, they'd gotten their skates. And then they'd set foot on the ice...

"You know, Ranma... ever since you arrived, I've had to redefine the term 'humanly possible' _several times_ ," Nabiki commented with a degree of fond exasperation. "I've seen you hang upside down from tree branches like a monkey, and scramble along an interior ceiling like a spider. I've watched you meditate by standing on your head and do a sort of push-up/handstand combination with just one hand..." she continued conversationally.

"Your point?" Ranma said back with a much less jovial tone of voice.

"How can somebody capable of doing all those amazing feats... be so absolutely terrible at ice skating?!" Nabiki finally blurted out, unable to hold back her disbelief any longer.

Ranma twisted his head to glare at her, and probably was about to give his excuse for the matter... but that proved to be a fateful mistake, as he finally lost the battle to keep both of his legs tucked straight under his body and they shot out into the air, dropping him flat on his butt in an impact that made all three girls wince. Instead, Ranma simply moaned as he span in circles for half a minute before finally falling flat on his back.

' _Oh, great... and here I thought this would be a nice, romantic date, too,'_ Nabiki sighed internally.

Others watching Ranma's distress were not so compassionate in their observations of his obvious inexperience.

"Pfahahahaha! Boy do you look stupid! Is this your first time skating? You want me to teach ya?" cackled one passing skater.. the already insulting words made even worse by the fact they were coming from an obvious grade-schooler who had to be maybe half of Ranma's age, if that.

Ranma scowled like a thunderhead and began tearing at his skates' laces. Once he had pulled them off, he got to his feet and, showing no sign of his former clumsiness now that he was barefoot, raced off of the rink, pausing only to tell Nabiki, "Hang on a second, I'll be right back," as he passed her by.

This time, Nabiki couldn't help but sigh aloud, giving Ranma an empathic look as she watched him move away. "Poor Ranma... this isn't what I wanted."

"Well, look on the bright side; he isn't running away from the ring entirely, right?" Kikuko pointed out, trying to look on the bright side as she usually did.

"Yeah, although, really, Nabiki; why'd you make up those silly stunts he did? You knew he'd be more insulted that way," Ryonami asked her boss.

"I made up nothing," Nabiki said deadpan, causing both of her companions to blink in shock and give her dumbfounded stares.

"Wait... you were serious?!" Ryonami boggled.

"How...?" Kikuko added, trying but failing to complete the sentence in her shock.

Nabiki simply smirked at their antics. "You should drop by and watch one of Ranma's work-outs sometime... or better yet, one of his sparring sessions with his father. You'll never look at your own fitness schedules the same way."

Meanwhile, as Nabiki was talking with her friends, Ranma was in the nearest public toilet, filling an emergency fire bucket up with cold water. He stared morosely at the shimmering liquid, turning off the tap once it was full, and then sighed softly. ' _This sucks... but Nabiki went to a lot of trouble to get us in here. It'd be wrong to waste it...'_ Then he picked up the bucket and poured the contents over his head, shivering as the cold water deluged him and brought on the change.

Newly female, she shook her head in an effort to clear the worst of it from her hair. 'I'm sorry, Nabiki... we'll consider this a practice one for our real date, okay?' she promised herself, before putting the bucket back down and heading back to the rink... leaving a pair of very confused teenage boys in her wake.

By the time she got back to Nabiki, her fiancée had retrieved Ranma's abandoned ice skates and was waiting outside of the rink. She looked up as Ranma approached. "Ranma, you're back! ...And a girl?"

"Yeah... it's too embarrassing to be out there as a guy. Even little kids laugh at guys who can't skate," Ranma glumly admitted. "But a girl just learning how to skate? Nobody's going to laugh at me like that... an' this way, we can get better so we can try this again for real some other time,".

Nabiki blinked in surprise. "You mean... you want to go back out there?" she asked a bit incredulously. She'd picked up pretty quick that Ranma's pride was a huge part of who he was, so his wanting to stick around was a pleasant surprise..

"Well, this was supposed to be a date," Ranma replied, scratching the back of her head. "An' I'd rather be a guy for it, but, I don't want to run out on it just because of some snotnosed brats, either. Don't wanna waste something like this; you're way too special."

Nabiki smiled and shook her head lightly, enjoying the feel of her heart beating just a little faster at Ranma's words. "You just love to throw me curveballs whenever I think I've got a handle on you, don't you?" she quipped, her tone light and teasing enough that Ranma could tell she wasn't upset.

"Ah, you love it," Ranma shot back, although the crimson tint of her cheeks at her own boldness made her words less cocksure than she had intended.

Nabiki simply stared at her fiancée, watching her fidget for a moment or three. Then she held out her hand, and tried not to let it show that it tingled when Ranma gently took it. No, it wasn't optimal that Ranma was a girl at the moment... but regardless of his current body, Ranma was still Ranma. It was important to keep one's perspective, especially when his curse was still such an unavoidable factor in their lives.

Ignored behind them, Kikuko slapped her hands over her mouth to keep herself silent. No matter how much of a compliment she might mean it as, she knew her boss would not take it kindly if she were to start squeeing at how adorable Nabiki and Ranma looked, holding hands so tenderly and just looking into each other's eyes, each blushing slightly before Nabiki led Ranma back out onto the rink.

Truth be told, Nabiki didn't really know where to start teaching Ranma how to skate. With only a single year's difference in their ages, she'd never really had the chance to do so for Akane. But she figured it couldn't be too hard; she just had to pass on what she knew about staying upright, starting and stopping on to Ranma, and then Ranma would be able to figure out the rest on his own. Her own. Whatever. After all, with Ranma's insane physical skills, it shouldn't take too much effort to get him on the right path and then let him take over from there.

The end result was Nabiki leading Ranma around, holding her fiancée's hand as the boy-turned-girl crouched for better control over her balance, inspired by some of the smaller kids that they were seeing scattered around the rink. "That's the way, Ranma; feel the rhythm. Skating's all about getting the rhythm of your legs under control... once we get that, we can start working more on your balance, so you can stand up."

"Thanks, Nabiki..." Ranma replied meekly. As Nabiki twisted around to skate backwards for a while, taking both of Ranma's hands in her own, the redheaded aquatransexual cast a mournful look up at her fiancée. "I must look really stupid like this, huh?" she asked.

At this, Nabiki shrugged. "Maybe a little... but, Ranma? You want to know something?"

"Hmm?" Ranma looked up at Nabiki inquisitively.

"Public opinion is overrated. When you're able to do what you want, who cares what other people think of you? Take me for example; they call me the Ice Queen at Furinkan High, and the Heartless Mercenary, and a lot of other nasty names too," Nabiki explained.

"Who calls you that?!" Ranma indignantly interjected looking around to find one of said people to give a righteous thrashing.

"Down, girl," Nabiki playfully scolded her in response. Though she'd be lying if she said that Ranma's protective fiance reaction didn't send a delicious warmth flooding through her heart. "My point is, they call me all those nasty names behind my back... but in the end? They all come crawling to me, and they don't have a choice. And that's real power. Who cares what they think? These people?" she gestured with a jerk of her neck at the people littering the rink, "They're nobodies. Their opinion doesn't matter. So you just focus on learning how to skate, and don't care about what they think, okay, Ranma?"

Ranma smiled brightly and nodded. "Okay! I mean, you're right... it's not like we're going to run into anyone we know out here..."

"BWEEEE!"

"Charlotte! Come back, Charlotte!"

The two fiancées blinked into each other's eyes in mutual confusion. "What the...?" Ranma began to say... right before a little black blur came zipping across the ice and right into her chest, causing the aquatransexual to instinctively clutch whatever it was that had hit her with both arms... a disastrous move, given the impact sent her shooting backwards across the ice, screaming like the girl she resembled as she went.

"Ranma!" Nabiki yelped, and immediately went to try and skate after her fiancée... before something slammed into her back and she fell flat on her face. "Ow! What's the big idea?!" she protested, instinctively twisting to glare at whoever had knocked her down, rubbing her nose with one hand to check that she wasn't bleeding.

She was greeted by a strange girl with long flowing locks of brown hair and bluish green eyes, her lips twisted into a childish pout as she leaned over Nabiki. "Give Azusa back her Charlotte!" the stranger demanded, stomping her foot in childish indignation.

"What are you talking about, you... kawaiiko bimbo?!" Nabiki spat back in a rage. Yes, Nabiki liked the idea of being thought "cute" - it was one of the few traditional Japanese girl failings she possessed. But she'd never been able to stand kawaiiko types - the forced cuteness made her teeth itch... and don't even get her started on burikko girls! Walking insults to her intelligence, the lot of them... worse, so many people just ate that stupid act up...

"You meanie! Give little Charlotte back to Azusa!" the stranger demanded petulantly.

"I don't have time for this nonsense!" Nabiki snapped dismissively, turning her back on the obvious mental case and trying to scramble back to her feet. She had a fiancée to rescue!

Completely out of her element, Ranma wailed in distress as she skidded backwards across the ice, clutching whatever had sent her on this unwanted trip to her bosom out of pure instinct. "Nabiki! Somebody! Help me!" she pleaded...

And that was when a pair of strong hands firmly but gently caught her by the waist, bringing Ranma to a proverbial screeching halt. The boy-turned-girl blinked in surprise as she was lifted upright, and then clean off of the icy floor of the rink.

Nabiki came skidding to a halt as she took in Ranma's savior, even as Ranma herself craned her head over her shoulder to see who was holding her up. As with the crazy girl who had knocked her down, Nabiki didn't recognize this brown-haired, blue-eyed stranger, but even she had to admit he was pretty damn handsome; a genuine hunk, even. Of course, as Nabiki would have been the first to point out, Ranma was just as good looking... when he was in the proper shape, at least...

"Are you alright, miss?" the stranger asked, and it actually took Ranma a moment to realize he was addressing her - stupid curse.

"Oh, yeah, thanks..."

"I must apologize for my partner... she has this habit of taking things that catch her fancy and giving them pet names, regardless of anyone else's opinion on the matter of ownership," the strange youth replied.

That finally drew Ranma's attention back to the... whatever it was... that she was holding. Looking away from the guy who was still holding her, too distracted to focus on that little annoyance for the moment, she looked into her arms... and two small, terrified eyes looked back at her, set above a flat pink nose. "Ryoga?!" Ranma blurted out.

The boy-turned-pig nodded, squealing forlornly and clasping his forehooves together in what was unmistakably a begging gesture.

And with perfect timing, the crazy girl came skating right over to the group, weaving casually around Nabiki and skimming to a halt in front of Ranma, Ryoga and the nameless youth. "Mikky!" she pleaded, eyes watery with unshed tears. "Make the mean girls give Azusa back her little Charlotte!" she wailed.

"Forget it! Ryoga's not your pet, lady!" Ranma blurted on pure instinct. Ordinarily, she'd have been content to let Ryoga fight his own battles... but this clearly wasn't a fair fight. Besides, this ditzy kleptomaniac had just butted her nose in on Ranma's date, and she wasn't going to forgive her for that!

"Oooh! Little Azusa will fight you for her!" the brat whined, stamping her foot once more, Nabiki and Ranma both marveling a bit at the odd sort of skill needed for one to _stamp their foot wearing ice skates_ and not fall over.

At this, Ranma burst out laughing. "Fight me? Yeah, at what? Teddy-bear throwing at high noon?" she mockingly suggested.

"No! Azusa challenges you to Martial Arts Figure Skating!" the brunette snapped back, pointing a demanding finger at the aquatransexual.

"...That's a thing?" Ranma asked, surprised but also intrigued. She studied Azusa with a new, more inquisitive eye, trying to gauge the potential combat abilities of somebody she had, until that moment, been ready to write off as probably having more hair than brains.

"What are you, stupid? Everybody knows Azusa Shiratori and Mikado Sanzenin are the Golden Pair of Martial Arts Figure Skating!" the brunette scoffed, hands on her hips.

"Never heard of you," Ranma bluntly retorted.

"It's news to me," Nabiki added, smirking at the indignation blooming on the burikko's face.

"Aw, now you've gone and hurt my feelings... and here I was going to help you take your little pet back from Azusa," said the strange boy, obviously this "Mikado Sanzenin", whom everybody had been ignoring until now.

"He's not my pet," Ranma replied instinctively.

"Now you'll have to make it up to me," Mikado continued, as if Ranma hadn't spoken at all.

"Huh?" Ranma asked, twisting back to look up at her unwanted rescuer... and that was her fatal mistake. For Ranma had no knowledge of just who it was that she had been allowing to hold her; how could she have known that Mikado Sanzenin was the most famous womanizer in all of Kolhotz High School? With her arms full of P-chan and her mind on other things, she was caught completely off-guard as Mikado swooped in and forcibly kissed her squarely on the lips.

Nabiki froze dead, eyes bulging and hair standing on end in sheer shock at what she was witnessing, too startled to even care about protecting her reputation as the Ice Queen of Furinkan. Not that Ranma was in any better condition... had this been a manga or an anime, there would have been a shot of Ranma's head splitting like a cracked pane of glass to represent just how badly scattered her mind was by this. The aquatransexual's arms fell limp, allowing Ryoga the pig to drop to the ice with barely an oink of protest, even as Azusa squealed in joy and snatched him up - the other Jusenkyo-cursed boy was too busy staring at Ranma in shock and disgust.

Oblivious to the psychological turmoil he had unthinkingly caused, Mikado gently lowered Ranma back to the icy surface of the rink. Had anyone been paying attention at the time, they would have marveled at the way that Ranma stood stiff-backed and straight upright, even after Mikado released her and stepped away.

"R...Ranma?" Nabiki hesitantly asked, fearful of what might be going through her genderbent fiancé's brain at that moment.

Stiffly, like some mechanical toy, Ranma took first one step, and then another. And then she burst into tears, covering her eyes with her crossed arms and bawling like a child as she fled from the rink, picking up remarkable speed for somebody who previously couldn't even stand up on the ice.

"Ah, to be moved so by my kiss; she's such a pure and sweet and innocent naive young child!" Mikado sighed, running a hand through the forelocks of his hair in a clearly practiced sensual maneuver.

Nabiki didn't even spare a moment's scorn for the pompous lech; her whole focus was on her poor fiancée. ' _I've_ _ **never**_ _seen him cry before...'_ rushed through her mind. An inane thought, but what else was she supposed to do at a moment like this?!

Ranma, meanwhile, made a beeline straight towards the nearest public baths. Burning with shame and fury, she didn't even slow down, throwing some change at the receptionist and grabbing a towel before ripping off her clothes and barging into the men's baths to plunge bodily into the heated central bath.

"That stupid jerk! How dare he-how dare he-how dare he! And in front of Nabiki, no less!" Ranma hissed to herself, only her burning desire not to be heard keeping her from shrieking it for the world to hear. The image of his fiancée's face flashed in front of his mind's eye, only to be washed away in a storm of fire and blood. It would have been bad enough to be kissed, but whilst the girl he liked was watching?!

A gaggle of very confused and now mildly concerned men watched as the water where that strange redheaded girl had plunged into began to bubble and steam, as if literally boiling around something white hot. Any thought of approaching was swiftly quashed when a black-haired youth erupted from beneath the surface, water visibly flashing to steam on his skin as he thundered...

" _ **I'mma kill him!"**_

* * *

Meanwhile...

* * *

In the privacy of her head, Nabiki cursed the ancestry of both Azusa Shiratori and Mikado Sanzenin going back seven generations, with only her pride in being the Ice Queen of Furinkan keeping her from doing so aloud - a large part of her powerbase came from her reputation as being above mere human distractions. No sooner had she thought to go after her traumatized fiancée than Mikado had taken notice of her and, showing his true colors, immediately come onto her, despite the fact that he knew she'd just seen him kissing the "girl" that she was with.

...No; Mikado didn't care that she'd seen him, he just thought she'd fall for his charms regardless. Arrogant lech... Nabiki had seen his type before, but the ones in Furinkan High would sooner cut their own lips off than try that sort of game with her.

Unfortunately, Mikado wasn't from Furinkan, so he had no idea who he was messing with. Especially with his current gambit; trying to coax Nabiki into yielding her lips with the promise of giving her "Charlotte" back. A pity he hadn't realized that Nabiki didn't really care about Ryoga in that way, and had every confidence he would find some way to escape Azusa - who was still complaining about the idea of giving up "Charlotte" - once she wasn't looking at her.

"Come on, beautiful... one little kiss and the pig is all yours," Mikado wheedled, putting on what even Nabiki had to concede was a handsome, smouldering expression that was pretty attractive even given the circumstances. "Surely it's not such a high price to pay? Why say no?"

"Well, for starters, I happen to be engaged," Nabiki dryly retorted. "And trust me, he will **not** be happy if he sees this." Of course, Ranma had every reason to beat Mikado senseless as it was, but why tell him that?

"Pft. Do I look worried about what some boor who can't even treat his fiancée properly by being there for her in her time of need might think?" Mikado scoffed.

" _ **Mikado!"**_

All across the rink, people who heard that thunderous bellow of rage felt a shiver of fear run icy fingers up their spines, flinching way or otherwise instinctively hurrying to get out of the way of its source as Ranma's battle aura unconsciously bled into his words.

Nabiki, daughter of a martial arts sensei and thusly not completely ignorant to the phenomena, even if she wasn't a trained fighter like her little sister, was better equipped to resist the urge to flinch. Instead, she smirked darkly at Mikado. "You should be..." she muttered to herself.

Ranma came stomping across the rink, compensating for his lack of control on the skates by literally stamping the blades into the icy crust like pickaxes. His fists were clenched until the knuckles had turned white, eyes almost glowing with hate as he leveled a killing glare at the man who had so humiliated him. "We gotta score ta settle, asshole!" he spat.

"Who are you? And why are you so angry?" Mikado replied in a level, almost pleasant tone, clearly too used to angry boyfriends to be really intimidated even by this sort of display.

"I'm Ranma Saotome, an' I'm the guy who's gonna beat ya within an inch of yer life!" Ranma snarled, raising a trembling fist... before bringing it down in a full-arm punch right into the icy surface of the rink.

Even Nabiki couldn't think of an onomatopoeia to describe the deep, sonorous cracking as the force of her fiancé's blow split the inches-thick crust of ice, causing a jagged crack to carve its way cleanly through the surface, stretching the meters-long gap from Ranma's fist to right between Mikado's feet. Of course, that might have been because she was busy trying and failing to process the amount of force that would be needed to pull off such a stunt, leaving her rather dead to the world.

From Azusa's arms, the wide-eyed Ryoga felt beads of nervous sweat prickling his skin; he knew that he could have pulled off a move like that, but Ranma? He didn't know his pigtailed nemesis had that kind of stunt in him! ' _...Wow, Ranma's_ _ **pissed**_ _. I'm_ _ **so**_ _glad I'm not in pretty-boy's skates right now...'_

Despite this impressive (monstrous) feat of strength, Mikado seemed unphased. Instead, he simply closed his eyes and shook his head. "I don't know what your grievance is with me... but damaging the sacred rink is a serious crime... I accept your challenge!" he declared, eyes snapping open as his arms twisted into a combat stance.

"I'm gonna make you sorry you were ever born..." Ranma hissed, unclenching his fists and partially uncurling his fingers into claw-like shapes, each twitching digit emitting snapping, crackling noises that made Nabiki think less of popping joints and more of breaking bones.

Azusa simply glanced between the two boys, mildly curious but completely indifferent. Her attention was focused on her precious little Charlotte, who had finally stopped struggling against her mommy.

This was because Ryoga, like Nabiki, had fixated the entirety of his attention on Ranma and Mikado. This was going to be a fight to remember, they were both certain of it...

Images of that cursed kiss flashed through Ranma's mind, feeding the fires of his loathing and rage. With a wordless cry of fury, he sprang into the air, sailing towards Mikado in a diving punch that would probably have knocked Ryoga senseless...

And then Mikado slid to the side at the last minute, causing the startled Ranma to sail past him and slam into the ice rink head first, burying himself up to the shoulders in its frozen surface as the impact kicked up a cloud of ice-chips and frosty "dust".

"Ranma!" Nabiki cried out in dismay, hands instinctively rising to her mouth in horror.

Azusa giggled at the sight.

Ryonami shook her head in disbelief from where she and Kikuko had been watching from the sidelines, her orange-haired counterpart staring in silent horror at Ranma's ominously still form. "Talk about major league headbutts..."

Mikado spared the prone form a contemptuous look and then sniffed dismissively, running his fingers through his forelocks in a calculatedly suave gesture. "Idiot. Only a fool would attempt to launch a suicide strike against his opponent so early in a battle," he scoffed.

"Who's suicidal?" came a bitter growl in Mikado's ear.

Mikado yelped, literally leaping off the ice and narrowly twisting out of the range of a punch from behind as Ranma materialized behind him like a vengeful spirit. Quickly, Mikado scrambled to put distance between them, hands raised in a counter posture as he took in Ranma's own glaring form. "H-how, how did you get up?!" Mikado blurted.

Ranma didn't reply, his eye simply twitching as he made another clumsy charge at Mikado, legs rising and falling in high steps to pick-step his way over the ice rather than skating. Mikado simply wove aside at the last moment again, causing Ranma to stumble right past him. Despite a valiant effort on Ranma's part, his treacherous feet slipped out from under him and he fell flat on his face, whizzing across the rink in an impromptu face-stand, observers scrambling to get out of the way before he slammed back-first into the retaining wall with so much velocity that he smashed straight through!

Seconds later, Ranma clambered back to his feet and marched stiffly back onto the rink, defiantly resuming a defensive stance.

"...What is he made out of?" an appalled Ryonami wondered.

"I don't know... you think he's always got that kind of stamina?" Kikuko wondered, earning a sideways glance from her friend.

Nabiki bit her tongue and watched silently, taking in the angry red friction burn running the vertical length of Ranma's face.

Despite Ranma's feats of resilience, Mikado still seemed unimpressed. "So, I see you do have some fight in you... I regret using this on an amateur, but you leave me no choice." He struck an elaborate pose, arms raised like wings and one leg bent at the knee. "Behold, the Dance of Death!" he cried, and then he began to pirouette rapidly in that spot, spinning around and around on one foot until he became a blur.

"You don't impress me, asshole!" Ranma snarled, charging across the ice in that clumsy non-skating manner again. This time, he managed to reach Mikado... only to be pulled into the gyrating vortex, becoming a vaguely Ranma-shaped blur that swirled around and around in Mikado's orbit like a leaf caught in a twister.

Azusa laughed triumphantly, hugging Ryoga-the-pig to her bosom. "Him finished now! Nobody's ever breaked free of Mikky's spin before! He's gonna pummel him stupid!" she giggled spitefully.

Just this once, Nabiki regretted not keeping up with the martial arts training her father had tried to give her when she was little, the way Akane had. It just seemed so pointless after... well, it just seemed like a lot of dirty, tiring exercise. But she knew Akane could do things that she couldn't because she had kept up training, and one of those things was follow things at a faster pace than she could. To her novice eyes, Ranma and Mikado were just a pair of orbiting blurs, and she had no idea what was going on. All she could do was hope that Ranma would be alright...

A good minute passed... and then Ranma suddenly was launched straight up from the vortex, arcing through the air and landing squarely on his head on the icy surface of the rink. Cracks spiderwebbed around him as he span two or three times, then went still. Behind him, Mikado also glided to a stop, still with one leg up and both arms extended into fists at different angles.

"Ranma!" Nabiki cried out, skating over to her fiancé as fast as she could. "Ranma? Are you okay?" she asked, then wished she could bite her tongue at saying something so stupid.

Ranma surprised her by grunting and placing his hands flat on the rink's surface. Slowly, visibly shaking with effort, he pushed himself up from the ice in a handstand, and then thrust himself into the air, twisting in a backflip to reorientate himself and land on his feet.

...Which of course immediately tried to slide out from under him. But, to her own amazement, Nabiki was actually ready for this. "Oh no you don't!" she cried out, speed blurring her words into one garbled burst of noise as she lunged for her fiancé's wrists and actually grabbed them before he could completely lose his balance again. Instead, she pulled him into her own arms, leaving him slumped partially over her shoulder. She could already see the bruises forming, and feel the limpness in Ranma's frame as she did her best to support his weight.

"Nnngh... 'm'sorry, 'biki," Ranma moaned softly into her ear. "Really screw'd this up..."

"It's not your fault," she assured him softly.

Before she could get any further, Azusa skated over, smirking triumphantly. "Aw, is him all beat up? Him shouldn't have picked a fight with Mikky!" she taunted them.

At this, Ranma actually managed a weak, shuddery laugh. "You should see the other guy," he rasped, free arm limply trying to shield obviously bruised ribs.

Azusa blinked, as did Nabiki herself. Both girls turned to look at Mikado, and realized that he was still in the exact same pose he'd been in since he'd sent Ranma flying. With barely a flick of effort, the burriko zipped over to Mikado, poking him in the chest, and then waving a hand in front of his eyes, all to no response. "Ah! He fainted!" she squealed in shock.

Ranma let out a stuttering laugh. "Dance of Death... wasn't too bad. But I gave better'n I got," he hissed.

"You big bully!" Azusa shrieked, zipping back over and making Nabiki flinch back. "You wouldn't do that in a real Martial Arts Figure Skating match!" she snapped.

"Any time, any when," Ranma spat back at her, raising his head and giving her a glare that was surprisingly undiminished for the fact he could only open one eye to do it with.

"One week from now! At the Kolhotz High School gym! Mikky and little Azusa will show you, and that uncute boyish girl of yours too!"

"Boyish?!" a surprised and indignant Nabiki blurted out, too shocked by that descriptor to consider the deeper implications of Azusa's words.

"We'll be there! And when we win, you'll give back the pig!" Ranma demanded, drawing upon the last reserves of his strength to try and stand firm.

"Then it's a challenge! Little Azusa will see you both on the rink!" the big-haired brunette proclaimed.

And that was something that both Nabiki and Ranma actually registered. "Both?" Nabiki asked.

"Martial Arts Figure Skating is for couples. One boy, one girl. You both have to fight Azusa and Mikado, or the challenge is forfeit," Azusa explained.

Those words sent ice-water running down Nabiki's spine. With an extra bucketful of icecubes added when Ranma blurted out. "Fine! We'll cream you losers!"

Azusa simply sneered and skated back over to her unconscious partner, leaving Nabiki shivering with equal parts fear and anger. "Ranma-," she started, unthinkingly slipping into the same icy tones that Akane used when angry, only to realize that her fiancé had finally reached his limit and was now passed out on her shoulder.

She bit back her scolding words, and then sighed loudly... no point in doing it now. She quickly headed for where Kikuko and Ryonami were standing, eager to put some distance between herself and the strangers who had ruined her date.

Her flunkies fell in at her side as she headed for the way off of the rink. "Wow, some odds, huh, boss?" Kikuko chimed in, trying to keep a stiff upper lip.

"What are you going to do, nabiki?" Ryonami asked her, more realistic than Kikuko.

"First... get this lunk home. Today is officially a bust," Nabiki sighed the sigh of the deeply frustrated. "After that... work out what we're going to do about this. But you girls? You're going to help me get Ranma home, and then I want you to dig up everything you can on those two clowns, understand?"

The icy look she cast at the other teens made them shiver and nod in hasty agreement. They would have helped out with carrying Ranma back to the Tendo Dojo anyway - you didn't just pass over a chance to 'innocently' fondle some prime grade-A beefcake when it was given to you on a silver platter, after all! - but the look in Nabiki's eyes was making them very, very glad that they weren't Azusa Shiratori or Mikado Sanzenin right now.

Oblivious to the three girls carrying one unconscious boy from the rink, Azusa tapped her foot as she stared into her partner's unseeing eyes. "Hmm... what to do with you..." she mused, idly petting her beloved Charlotte as she did. Then an idea struck and she smiled hugely. "Imma doodle on you!" she chirped, tucking Ryoga-the-pig under one arm and fishing out a colorful marker from one of her pockets with the other.

"Doodley-doo, doodley-do, doodley-doo-da-doo!" she chirped to herself as she began to scribble all over Mikado's face.

* * *

Later that afternoon, at the Tendo Estate...

* * *

Getting an unconscious Ranma all the way back to the Tendo Dojo hadn't exactly been the easiest thing to do. Nabiki was glad both for her friends being present and that she did at least keep up an exercise regime, including the occasional bit of dumbbell lifting.

Ranma hadn't woken up the whole way there, and frankly Nabiki wasn't surprised, given the amount of blunt-force trauma she'd seen him taking in the past hour. But finally she had made it home, and had taken Ranma right to the living room, it being the closest and thus most convenient place to lay him down.

"Welcome home-Nabiki, oh my! Whatever happened?" Kasumi gasped as she saw her little sister stagger into the living room, awkwardly carry-dragging her unconscious fiancé with her.

"It's a long story... help me out, sis?" Nabiki pleaded.

"Oh, my, of course." Kasumi murmured, but immediately moved to grab a pillow for Ranma's head before helping Nabiki lay him down... which, of course, was when Soun, Genma and Akane all walked into the room.

"Nabiki!? What happened? Are you alright?!" Soun blurted, overwhelmed by paternal concern for his middle child.

"I'm fine, daddy - Ranma's the only one who got hurt," Nabiki replied, sitting down next to her fiancé whilst Kasumi went to get disinfectant and bandages.

"And what happened to my son? I thought the two of you went out on a date!" Genma rumbled.

"We had an... incident with some jerk at the skating rink," Nabiki replied. Somehow, she doubted Ranma would want anyone to know about his having been kissed by some random lech... especially his father!

"Ranma picked a fight he couldn't win, huh?" Akane scoffed.

"Actually, it was Ryoga's fault," Nabiki shot back at her.

"Ryoga? Is he alright? What happened?" Kasumi asked, having returned just in time to hear that, even as she sat down next to Ranma with the first aid kit.

"We were just minding our own business when Ryoga comes scrambling across the rink as a pig, being chased by this saccharine little bimbo with bigger eyes than her brain. He sees us and tries to take shelter behind us, so she comes over and starts demanding we give her 'wittle Charlotte' back to her." The withering tone and air quotes would have been funny if not for the absolute disdain Nabiki was displaying for the aforementioned bimbo. "Then her partner shows up and he starts trying to put the moves on me, saying he'll give us our 'pet' back if I give him a kiss. Ranma objected to that, and they got into a fight, and... well, you can see what happened to Ranma," Nabiki explained, taking her own tube of disinfectant cream and gently applying it to Ranma's road-rash.

Which was Ranma shifted, hissing in pain and slowly opening his eyes. "Ngh... 'biki?" he asked blearily, blinking in an obvious attempt to clear his vision.

"You're awake! You had me worried, Ranma," Nabiki scolded him.

"What? Over a little scuffle like that? Nah, I'm tougher than that," Ranma assured her, actually managing to make that cocky smile of his that Nabiki enjoyed so much.

"I was more worried about the times you tried to headbutt your way straight through the rink. Should have known you don't have any brains to damage," she huffed, peeling open a bandaid and plastering it over Ranma's skinned nose with a bit more force than was called for, with Ranma's yelp being partly of pain and partly of confusion at his fiancée's rough bedside manner.

Her uncharacteristically harsh words towards her fiancé made everybody blink in confusion. "Um... did I miss something?" Akane hesitantly inquired.

"Oh, just my knuckleheaded fiancé deciding that it wasn't enough to beat up the jerk once, he also had to accept the bimbo's challenge to a rematch in Martial Arts Figure Skating," Nabiki replied coldly, swabbing disinfectant cream on Ranma's arm.

"And... that's bad? Ranma beat him once already," Akane pointed out, hoping she could stop playing devil's advocate for _Ranma_ of all people.

"Yes, it's bad, little sister... because Martial Arts Figure Skating matches are held in mixed-sex pairs, and Ranma here decided it'd be just fine and dandy to accept when he knows I can't do martial arts!" Nabiki snapped, casting a frigid look at Ranma, who squirmed meekly before her righteous indignation.

"Oh, my... Nabiki, what are you going to do?" Kasumi asked in concern.

"Well, my first thought would be to call off the match," Nabiki declared.

"Not likely," Ranma muttered reflexively, before wincing at the **very** displeased look Nabiki shot him.

"Excuse me?" Nabiki snapped. "We both know Ryoga can escape on his own from that idiot Azusa, so why am I being dragged into this?!"

Ranma blanched. "It's not my fault! But do you really think that jerk Mikado will let me turn the challenge down? Or let us live it down if we do refuse to fight?"

Nabiki grimaced. She hadn't thought of that... she was tempted to say damn the consequences and refuse anyway, but then... that'd be letting somebody get the better of her. Forget what the kids at Furinkan might start thinking if they learned that; could she really live with herself if she came off as second best?

"...Dammit. You have a point... but how are we supposed to win this? Akane's the martial artist in the family, not me!" she complained, mentally admitting she could now see why Ranma had reacted the way he did but not saying anything. He was still in trouble after all

"But you are the brains," Ranma replied immediately, drawing an indignant "hey!" from Akane that everybody ignored. "I know you can think of something."

Nabiki bit her lip, frustration and pride and a touch of the now-familiar butterflies warring in her at Ranma's unabashed confidence in her skills. She almost couldn't bring herself to burst his bubble of hope...

Which was when Genma suddenly startled everybody by loudly feigning a cough. "That might not be as hard as you are both thinking. I know how you can win this fight."

A synchronized chorus of "You do?" arose from everybody else present, a series of surprised, suspicious or hopeful gazes suddenly locked onto the Saotome patriarch.

"That's right," Genma replied, nodding sagely. "I happen to be familiar with the fighting style in question."

"You are?! Since when?" Soun blurted out, staring incredulously at his old training partner.

"Do you remember Khristina Baranov?" Genma replied, casting a sidelong look at Soun.

"Who...? Ah! Yes, I remember her. That was a long time ago..." Soun murmured, stroking his mustache wistfully .

A baffled Nabiki stole a glance at Ranma, who responded with a confused look and a rapid shake of his head to indicate that this was news to him too.

"My point is, Martial Arts Figure Skating is an environmental style, rather than a traditions-based one," Genma explained. "It doesn't rely on specific competition rules or rituals in its matches - it's closer to kenpo than sumo wrestling. And that means that there's no rule that Nabiki has to actively participate in the defeat of your opponents."

"...You mean, your brilliant plan is for me to show up and let Ranma take care of the heavy lifting?" Nabiki asked, more than a little incredulously. It wasn't that she had some kind of moral objection to letting Ranma handle the actual messy business of punching faces, but there was still one little drawback to that plan. "And how do I avoid getting creamed whilst I'm out there?"

"That, unfortunately, has only one solution. We'll have to give you some emergency martial arts training," Genma explained with a patently false face of regret.

A cold sweat broke out over Nabiki, making her flesh tingle. "But I don't know the first thing about martial arts!" she protested weakly.

"Now that's an exaggeration; you trained when you were little, just like your sisters," Soun chided her, his look of disappointment putting Nabiki's figurative back hairs up right quick.

"That was years ago, daddy! And I haven't kept up my training like Akane has!" Nabiki pointed out.

"I'm not promising miracles, girl. But even you can be taught a few tricks to keep you alive out there," Genma solemnly explained.

A part of Nabiki bristled indignantly at the dismissive implications of Genma's words. It was promptly beaten into silence by the pragmatic majority of her. "And what about Ranma's training?"

Now, finally, Genma blinked in confusion. "What about him? He already knows how to fight, and he cleaned this Mikado's clock once already, you said."

"Yeah, he can fight... but what about skating? He's terrible at it! He can barely stand up on the ice!" Nabiki pointed out, too angry at this whole mess to have any hesitations about blurting out that little fact, which left Ranma wincing.

Genma simply shrugged. "Ranma will have to train himself for that. It wouldn't be the first time. He can handle himself. You, on the other hand... we had better get started straight away." Nabiki honed in on the words "It wouldn't be the first time." but did not have long to ponder them before he grabbed Nabiki's wrist and pulled her to her feet, dragging the startled middle Tendo daughter in the direction of the dojo.

"Hey, wait, I never! Stop!" Nabiki sputtered, trying to muster a coherent protest, only to find Genma's grip as inexorable as an iron shackle and the man moving with the inevitability of a bulldozer, leaving her helpless to do anything but follow.

The rest of the Tendo household watched her go, but the shock quickly wore off. A wicked grin spread across Akane's face. "Nabiki? Training? This I gotta see!" she giggled, quickly scurrying after the two, with Soun hot on her heels.

Ranma cast a guilty look after them, and tried to sit up... only for his bruised body to make its protests quite insistent, and sending him crashing back to the floor. "I really screwed this up," he sighed, feeling the guilt wrapping leaden links around his heart.

"It wasn't your fault, Ranma. It's not as if you started this on purpose, did you?" Kasumi asked, meticulously tending to her future brother-in-law's injuries.

"No!" Ranma immediately protested, shooting a look of wounded innocence at the eldest Tendo daughter.

"Then you shouldn't blame yourself. Just focus on getting better. Nabiki will be fine - your father's not going to hurt her, after all," Kasumi soothed him.

Ranma cast her an ambivalent look, but held his tongue and stayed his peace, letting the eldest Tendo concentrate on patching him up. Despite her kind words, he still knew he'd seriously messed things up... he had to make this up to Nabiki...

* * *

In the Tendo Dojo...

* * *

Doing her best to push aside ancient and rather unwelcome memories, Nabiki stared nervously at the hulking bear of a man who purported to one day be her father-in-law.

"Alright, Nabiki; let's start somewhere simple. I want you to punch me," Genma declared.

Nabiki stared at Genma as if he'd just turned into a panda for the first time. "Are you sure about that?"

"It's the easiest way for me to gauge your skills. Now... punch me!" he ordered, taking a very open stance.

Nabiki didn't hesitate twice. All it took was a moment's thought to dredge up all the things about Genma that she found annoying, and she launched a straight-arm punch right into the Saotome patriarch's stomach. To her amazement, she actually hit him! She'd been expecting him to dodge or block it at a split second, like she'd seen Ranma do all the time. For the briefest of moments, she felt a glimmer of hope, even pride!

...And then the pain in her wrist registered and she grabbed her hand up with a bawl of surprise, clenching her wrist as what felt like every bone in it reverberated from the impact on Genma's stomach. "What are you made of? Brick?" She gasped, panting in pain as she tried to squeeze the burning fire from her pulsing fingers.

Akane covered her eyes in sheer embarrassment, whilst Genma shook his head with ponderous slowness. "I wasn't expecting much, but... that was pathetic," he proclaimed with a broadening grin that Nabiki swore was sadistic. "We've got a lot of work to do... I want you to try and copy these forms... hurry up!"

* * *

About an hour later...

* * *

"And rest!"

Nabiki allowed herself to stop repeating the exercises that Genma had been showing her and demanding that she mimic, sinking to her knees in exhaustion, sweating like a pig and panting like a dog. She couldn't remember the last time that she'd felt this worn out!

Watching the shuddering, exhausted wreck of a girl, Genma simply rubbed his chin contemplatively. "Hmm... better. You're not entirely hopeless," he announced begrudgingly.

"High praise," Akane sarcastically quipped from the sidelines. Still, she couldn't deny a certain sense of schadenfreude at watching her sister's suffering... this felt so much like karma for the many years of her teasing Akane for her interest in martial arts!

Meanwhile, Soun sniffed back a tear, although even he couldn't determine if he was crying at the suffering his little girl was undergoing, fear of the thought of her having to get into an actual martial arts battle, or pride that Nabiki was actually trying to learn martial arts herself.

"You have a surprising ability to grasp the forms, and a very good memory. Physical traits all need major work... how long do we have until this match?" Genma looked over at Ranma, who had crept in about half an hour ago to watch and hadn't dared to speak up.

"Uh, about a week?" he confessed after tallying everything mentally.

"Hmph. Well, I suppose there's one thing for it. Your father will help in trying to get your physical abilities to a somewhat passable level. But it seems we'll need to focus your training on mastering the Saotome School Final Attack," Genma declared with a raised finger and, in Ranma's opinion, an overdone pose.

"The Saotome School Final Attack? What's that?" Akane interjected, giving Genma an excited look. An actual secret technique, from Ranma's school no less?!

"Nothing less than mastery of the principles of Speed, Strategy, and Separation," Genma explained stoically, his face the very picture of a wise martial artist dispensing great wisdom.

Silence fell across the dojo, as three knowing minds waited for two unknowing ones to be similarly enlightened. Ironically, it was Akane who put the pieces together first.

"That's just a fancy way of running away!" she cried out, glowering at Genma. "How can you call yourself a martial artist with a move based on that?!"

"Hey, it's harder than it sounds!" Ranma protested, earning a scornful sneer from Akane.

"And it's our only option," Genma interjected hurriedly. "Unless either Nabiki is actually a master martial artist who's been hiding her prowess to spare your feelings-"

Despite herself, Akane couldn't help but cast an inquisitive look at Nabiki, who quickly shook her head.

"-Or she's a martial arts prodigy who can master in seven days what it took my boy fourteen years to learn? Then all we can do is teach her how to better evade danger whilst Ranma focuses on doing the actual fighting," Genma concluded. He stopped and looked at the still-panting Nabiki, then shook his head. "I think we've done enough for this evening. We'll resume training tomorrow... naturally, you'll be skipping school until the day of the match to focus on practice."

At that, Nabiki moaned in despair and collapsed face-first onto the floor. A week of this?! Ryoga was going to _**pay**_ when she saw him next!

Unable to resist, whilst their fathers filed out of the dojo and headed back to the house, eager to see what Kasumi had prepared for dinner, Akane walked over to her prone sister and patted her on the shoulder in a consoling gesture.

"Don't worry, Nabiki; it gets easier with practice," she assured her. The words elicited another mournful moan from the middle Tendo, at which Akane merely smiled; it was about time Nabiki learned what it took to be a martial artist.

As the youngest Tendo left and made her way to the living room, Nabiki was left to stew in her thoughts. At least, until the sound of soft footsteps approaching her drew her back to the world of the living. She shifted around, and looked up into the guilt-stricken face of Ranma.

"Um... here. I got you some cool water," he said, meekly offering her a glass.

Nabiki immediately snatched the life-giving nectar from Ranma's hand and pulled it to her mouth, her own hands shaking with her eagerness to drink.

Ranma promptly snatched it back from her. "Hey-hey! Not so fast, you'll make yourself sick," he chided her, before slowly bringing the rim of the glass to her mouth.

This time, Nabiki consented to letting Ranma dictate the pace... she had to admit, after those first few agonizing moments where she just wanted to guzzle it down, it actually did feel and taste much better as it slowly sluiced down her throat. By the time she'd polished off the glass, she felt much better. "Thanks, Ranma," she instinctively told him.

"It's nothing... um, Nabiki?"

She looked up at him, seeing the way he couldn't meet her gaze, fidgeting in clear discomfort. ' _I've never seen him look this shy before... no, wait; back when we first learned about the curse,'_ she privately corrected herself.

Finally, after a moment's hesitation, Ranma sighed and mournfully said, "I'm sorry, Nabiki. I didn't mean to get you involved in this."

Nabiki simply stared at him calmly, considering his words. ' _I should give him the riot act for this mess... but it's not like he wasn't provoked, was it? Besides, look at him; it would be like kicking up a puppy... lucky for you, Ranma, that I like puppies.'_ Pushing down the urge to smirk, Nabiki instead calmly proclaimed, "I know you didn't, Ranma, and I'm not mad... not at you, anyway. But still, you have got to learn to think before you leap! We might not get so lucky the next time something like this happens," she chided him.

"I promise, Nabiki," he replied, visibly perking up at her accepting his apology. Then his expression shifted to a more pensive one, with Ranma nervously twiddling his fingers. "Um...ah... about our date?"

"Yes? What about it?" Nabiki asked, wondering what he was thinking.

"I know today was a bust, but... could we maybe try it again? Once we beat the tar outta these saps who messed it up?" he asked hopefully.

' _He really needs to ask?'_ Nabiki marveled. Then, she replied aloud by saying, "Of course we can, Ranma."

Ranma visibly brightened up. "Thanks, Nabiki!" he cheered.

"But you're going to pay for it," she interjected, smiling as she did so. "That's your punishment for this."

Ranma simply shrugged. "Eh, fair enough. C'mon; let's get and have dinner. You need to eat to get your strength back."

With perfect poignant timing, Nabiki's stomach growled like an animal, wringing a blush from the startled Tendo girl. Taking Ranma's hand, she let him lift her to her feet, and then the pair of engaged teens made their way to the dining room.

* * *

Tuesday morning...

* * *

When the Saotomes had moved into the Tendo household, Nabiki thought she had found the worst wakeup call ever: being jarred awake by the sounds of father and son fighting like a pair of wild animals, with battle cries and the smack of flesh-on-flesh dragging her into the waking world at the crack of dawn.

Now she knew there were even worse ways... like being grabbed from her warm cosy bed and thrown out the window, with only the desperate efforts of her fiancé keeping her from plunging into the icy waters of the koi pond the way that Ranma had done mere minutes beforehand.

"Pop, are you nuts?! What were you thinking?!" the soaking wet redhead shrieked, cradling her significantly taller fiancée to her newly sprouted and consequently still-damp bosom.

"Pah, a little wake-up bath never hurt anybody! Besides, she needs to start working on her danger sense, so I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone," Genma scoffed, giving Ranma a look that said he was being particularly thick for not getting the idea.

Which was when a palpable wave of battle aura rolled across the garden, a sensation of mingled rage and fear and intimidation that even Nabiki could sense - if only because she'd had previous experience with this before. The light dimmed as a monstrous, ukiyo-e rendition of her father's head suddenly loomed over the now-pale and visibly sweating Genma, tongue lashing like a whip.

" _ **Sao! To! Me!"**_ Soun's voice thundered like the echoing cacophony of an angry deity. "How dare you do that to my little girl!" he roared, the Demon Head technique bursting like a soap bubble to reveal the Tendo patriarch, clad in full samurai armor and sporting a naginata, with which he began to chase Genma around the garden.

Nabiki took in the sight of her father in full protective outrage mode, and then blinked slowly. "So... what now?" she asked hesitantly, trying to ignore the feeling of Ranma... well, _squishing_ up against her arm.

"Well..." Ranma said, before swinging her gently to her feet. "First we're going to stretch..."

Ranma immediately set to taking up a pose she obviously expected Nabiki to mimic, "...And then we're going to chase pop down and beat him senseless. Sound good to you?" she chirped, smiling wickedly.

Nabiki blinked, and then her own malicious grin spread slowly across her face. "I think that sounds like a wonderful idea, Ranma" she agreed, beginning to mimic Ranma's stretches...

* * *

Tuesday afternoon...

* * *

Ranma spat a curse in Chinese Sailor, a multi-ethnic pidgin tongue he'd learned on the docks of China, as his treacherous feet slipped from underneath him yet again, sending him crashing face-first onto the ice. Nabiki was back at the Tendo house, undergoing more training, but he'd been sent back to the local ice rink to get his skating practice done. Some snot-nosed little brat laughed at his ineptitude on the ice, but went very quiet indeed when Ranma snarled and smashed one fist against the ice, sending thin cracks radiating outwards through the thick frozen crust.

' _Stupid skates... why is this so hard?! But I gotta do this... I got Nabiki into trouble because I was a coward and tried to hide behind my curse... it's my responsibility to make up for!'_

Gritting his teeth, Ranma slowly clambered back to his feet, determined to try this again, and again, and again; as many times as it took to make things right!

* * *

Wednesday morning...

* * *

"Alright, the principle of this exercise is simple... if you can dodge a ball, you should be able to dodge a punch," Genma explained, casually tossing one of Nabiki's tennis balls up and down in his hand as she did so.

"I guess that makes sense..." Nabiki admitted, watching Genma warily.

"Good... now, **dodge!** "

Nabiki yelped as Genma's arm suddenly snapped out - she'd forgotten how fast the chunky-looking Saotome patriarch could move! - and just barely stepped out of the way of the ball as it sped past her like a giant green bullet.

It audibly ricocheted off the walls and ceiling of the dojo before slapping meatily back into Genma's waiting palm, where he began to casually toss it again. "Hmm... better than I expected, to be honest. Let's try that again..."

That was all the warning Nabiki had before the ball rocketed past her again, which she narrowly avoided. "What happened to the warning?!" she protested.

"Foolish girl! Do you believe your enemy will telegraph every move they make so blatantly?! You must learn to sense danger and react without thinking!" Genma thundered, even as he launched the ball at her a third time.

To Nabiki's credit, she managed to dodge Genma's "attacks" a good five or six times... then she took one right to the sternum, and things went downhill rapidly from there.

* * *

Wednesday afternoon...

* * *

The sound of ice-skate blades biting into the frozen crust of the rink filled Ranma's ears as he sped across the surface, pushing himself to see how fast he could really go. It had taken him longer than he liked to admit to finally get the trick of balancing, but now he could reliably stand upright and move without falling over, a far cry to how badly he'd done before.

But that didn't mean he could be resting on his laurels! Now it was time to keep pushing, because just being able to stand up reliably wouldn't be that impressive against that asshole Mikado...

A kid suddenly darted in front of Ranma, who tried to swerve away... only to lose control and go sailing across the ice, smashing headfirst through the retaining wall.

"Aaaoooowww... Gotta work on my turns," he moaned, rubbing his aching forehead.

* * *

Thursday morning...

* * *

Seeing Nabiki going for a morning jog was not an unusual thing in this neighborhood - Akane would also do the same thing. But the locals had never seen her being chased by an angry bald man in a gi cracking a horsewhip in the process before.

"Come on, run, girl, run! Your enemies will be crueler than this!" Genma roared, punctuating his words with snaps of his whip.

"You're crazy! How did Ranma survive training under you?! Mikado wouldn't be this bad!" Nabiki hollered over her shoulder as she did everything she could to stay ahead of Genma. She had a welt on her ass to prove that he wasn't brandishing that whip for show.

Hot on Genma's heels was the enraged Soun Tendo, clad once again in his ancestral samurai armor. "Saotome?! I told you not to harm my little girl!" he roared, swinging his naginata around for emphasis.

"Come back here, you maniac!" Akane Tendo agreed, brandishing her shinai with murderous intent as she ran alongside her father. She'd been planning on heading to school, and then she'd caught sight of Genma's latest "training exercise" for her sister, and all thoughts of that had flown right out of her head.

Popcorn was distributed as neighbors and passers-by alike stopped to watch the impromptu farce being performed in broad daylight.

* * *

Thursday afternoon...

* * *

Ranma waved his arms frantically, trying to reaffirm his balance after landing from a leap and flip - ordinarily, such an act would have been child's play to him after his years of dedicated training, but doing it on the ice added an element of extra continuous motion that he was having to deal with. For one long, terrible moment, he thought he was going to fall again... but finally, at the last second, he managed to simultaneously stop himself and stand up straight. He exhaled a sigh of relief, but then permitted himself a triumphant grin.

' _I got you now, Mikado... Next time, we'll have a_ _ **real**_ _fight...!'_

* * *

Friday morning...

* * *

Ranma stared into the sink full of cold water, trying to chase off the twin feelings of deja vu and fear that were rattling around inside his skull. ' _Stop it, Ranma! Mikado ain't gonna be here, and you know that you_ _ **need**_ _to train your girl body for this too. Your center of gravity shifts, and you know it's possible you could get splashed as part of this match - ice is just water so cold it froze, after all.'_

He took a deep breath, held it, then exhaled slowly as he steeled himself. Biting his lip, he plunged his arms into the water and splashed it over his face, feeling the now-familiar transformation take effect. Flicking her wet ponytail aside, Ranma grabbed her female-sized skates and headed for the rink, ready to start practicing.

* * *

Friday afternoon...

* * *

Nabiki stared at the cinderblock as it lay there before her, silently taunting her from atop its brick stands. She held up one dainty, feminine hand, staring at it as if she'd never seen it before. Hesitantly, delicate fingers curled into a tiny fist, doubt squirming in her stomach like a live eel.

Closing her eyes, Nabiki inhaled deeply, holding her breath. 'Okay, Nabiki, you can do this... Akane does it all the time. Daddy said you can do it, and even Mr. Saotome said you were ready. Just gotta focus... find your center... and...!'

The middle Tendo's eyes snapped open and her held breath exploded from her in a mighty "Hi-yaah!" as she drove her fist down without hesitation squarely into the cinderblock... and split it in half!

"Ha-huh!" Nabiki half-gasped, half-laughed. "I-I did it! Akane, I did it!" she blurted out, looking over to her little sister for recognizance... and then blanching as she watched Akane effortlessly smash a pile of four bricks with one lazy-seeming strike.

Akane blinked and looked up from the pile of concrete shards. "Hmm? Did you say something, Nabiki?"

"N-no, never mind," Nabiki told her, wilting. ' _What was I thinking, showing off like that to Akane, of all girls?'_

Unfortunately for her, Akane was a bit more observant than Nabiki had given her credit for. She spotted the smashed brick in front of her elder sister, and her eyes lit up with glee. "Nabiki! You did it! That's amazing!" she shouted, smiling happily as she ran over to give her startled sibling a hug.

"I- it was just one brick, though!" Nabiki protested feebly.

"Doesn't matter! Just five days ago, you couldn't have broken a stick of pocky!" Akane laughed, giving Nabiki a playful squeeze before letting her go. "You really have come a long way, sis - I never knew you had a talent for martial arts yourself. Even Mr. Saotome said it," Akane confessed.

"He did, huh?" Nabiki replied, trying to wrap her head around the idea of Ranma's crazy father saying that... and if it was a good or a bad thing that he thought so.

"Yeah... okay, he was a jerk about it, too, but he did say you have a knack for martial arts... how come you've never given them a try before?" Akane asked inquisitively.

"They're just... not my thing. I like my creature comforts, not getting all hot and sweaty. So don't worry, little sister; once this stupid mess with Mikado and Azusa is done, I'll be retiring and you can go back to being the Tendo School Champion, okay?" Nabiki assured her.

Akane simply looked at her strangely. Truth be told, there was a part of her that felt relieved by that; martial arts had always been the thing that made her special in the family, and she didn't really like the idea of Nabiki taking that from her. It actually stung a little that nobody had suggested that she substitute for Nabiki in this upcoming fight... well, alright, she probably would have refused, but it was the thought that mattered! But... on the other hand, she kind of liked the idea of being able to share martial arts with her big sister, too.

' _Gah, how am I supposed to feel about this?'_ Akane grumbled in the privacy of her own head. ' _Thank goodness the match is in three days, and this nonsense will all be over and done with!'_

* * *

Saturday...

* * *

"Gee, Ryonami, do you think Nabiki will be mad that we took so long to come here?" Kikuko hesitantly asked her companion as they walked through the front gate into the Tendo Estate.

"You worry too much, Kikuko!" the brunette chided her. "Nabiki always says that the more information you have, the better. It's not our fault that it took us so long to get all this information from Kolhotz High School... especially since she also had us doing her homework for her this week, too."

"Yeah... I wonder why she's been absent. Do you think she's sick?" Kikuko mused.

"We'll soon find out," Ryonami replied. Spotting Kasumi sweeping, she walked over to the eldest of the Tendo Daughters. "Good afternoon! I'm sorry, but may we see Nabiki? We're friends of hers from class," she explained.

"Oh, yes, I remember you - Ryonami and Kikuko, right? Nabiki should be in the dojo - please, go on through," Kasumi politely replied.

The two 17-year-olds exchanged mutual confused looks. Nabiki? In the dojo? Thusly both informed and bemused, they followed Kasumi's directions and soon found themselves stepping through the doors into the Tendo Dojo... and into a scene that neither of them could have imagined in their wildest, most late-night junk-food binge-fueled nightmares!

There in front of them was their friend and unofficial leader, Nabiki Tendo, the smartest girl in Furinkan, the girl who always tried to get out of gym class or anything physical when she could... clad in a gi and fighting with her little sister. Not in the usual female use of the term "fight", either, where two angry girls would scream insults and accusations at each other at the top of their lungs. No, this was Nabiki and Akane going at it with fists and feet flying; punches, kicks, karate chops, the whole shebang... and Nabiki was winning!

...Okay, she was keeping Akane at bay instead of being knocked out in one blow, but still, it was a sight that the two teens couldn't have imagined in their most fevered dreams. And when Akane made a fatal error in the form of an overextended punch, which Nabiki responded to by grabbing and flipping Akane cleanly over her shoulder to a painful rump-first landing on the floor? Kikuko and Ryonami's eyes nearly fell out of their sockets!

But it seemed her actions had come as a surprise even to Nabiki, because moments after Akane hit the floor, Nabiki blinked and then clasped her hands over her mouth in horror. "Oh-no-Akane! I'm sorry! Are you alright?!" she cried out in a rare display of sincere sisterly dismay.

"Wha? Bleh!" Akane shook her head, and then gave her sister an upside-down grin. "I'm fine, Nabiki! Wow, you've come a long way since we started - I can't believe you got this good in just five days!"

"Well, it wasn't like Mr. Saotome was giving me much of a choice," Nabiki pointed out, concern quickly snuffed and buried under a more normal layer of dry wit and sarcasm.

At that, Akane frowned. "Yeah... actually, that kind of explains why Ranma is such a jerk, if he grew up with that. I think I'll stick to asking for Ryoga's help if I need to kick up my training..." she muttered.

This was all too surreal for Ryonami, who shook her head and tried to get things back to normal by announcing herself. "Hello? Nabiki? You wanted to speak to us?" she called.

Nabiki visibly started, clearly not having detected her friends arrival. "Ryonami?! Kikuko?! What? ...Oh. Oh, yeah, that's right," she replied, memories finally managing to shoulder their way forward after the crazy near-week that she'd had. "Akane, do you mind?" she asked.

Akane, who had pulled herself upright by this point, simply shook her head. "No, no; go ahead. You've been training long and hard. It's about time that you went and had a break," she assured her sibling.

"Thanks, Akane," Nabiki said, giving her sister a soft smile before she turned to her friends. "Let's go to my room; we can talk there..."

Without hesitation, she began leading the way, with Kikuko and Ryonami instinctively falling behind her. The path to Nabiki's room was far more familiar, and soon the trio were safely ensconced in the intimate territory of Nabiki's private room. The middle Tendo sat on her chair and stared up at her underlings, steepling her fingers as she said. "Now... what have you learned?"

Save for the little incongruity that she was still wearing a gi, this was a slice of normality, and Kikuko immediately felt the balance of the universe restored. "Okay, so, Azusa Shiratori and Mikado Sanzenin; they're students at Kolhotz High School and they're its resident champions of Martial Arts Figure Skating. In fact, they're known all over Tokyo, and might even be going onto the world stage at some point if they stick with it as they age - they've scored a record of 950 consecutive wins since their career began!"

Truth be told, that was a very impressive number; even Nabiki felt shocked. But she had a reputation as the Ice Queen to uphold, and so she buried her feelings behind her traditional icy mask. "Interesting... they're that strong?"

"Yeah... they've both got big fanclubs, although most of them are horny teens with a crush on them. Azusa's actually supposedly from some rich family, which is how she avoids getting into trouble with all her klepto antics. Mikado's smarter than she is, but he's also an incurable lech - Ranma wasn't the first girl he kissed like that... uh, no offense," Ryonami added, once she realized who she was talking to.

"I kind of suspected that," Nabiki noted dryly, Mikado's actions had been way too...natural to be something he didn't do often enough to be second nature to him.

"A lot of people think he has some kind of weird 'thing' for kissing. Because he kisses one girl, and then that's it; he dumps her and goes looking for the next one, ready to score and then start the cycle all over again."

' _I knew something was creepy when he came onto me at the rink,'_ Nabiki mused privately. "Good work, ladies... anything else?"

"One other thing... the Golden Pair are also known as the Anti-Matchmakers. See, a lot of Martial Arts Figure Skating teams are romantic couples, and the Golden Pair's tactics revolve really heavily around turning couples against each other," Kikuko added.

"Wait, seriously?" Nabiki asked, too incredulous to resist doing so.

"Yeah... they both like to flirt with the team-member of the opposite sex or make it look like they're doing stuff, so their opponents will get jealous and start bickering with each other. But their main tactic is a move they call the Goodbye Whirl," Ryonami explained. "Azusa grabs the guy on the other team, who grabs the girl, and then Mikado lifts Azusa up and starts spinning around like a top. As they spin, they tell the guy that if he lets his partner go, they'll let him down unharmed... course, once the sucker does what they tell him, Mikado darts off to save the girl and Azusa basically piledrives the guy into the rink. Naturally, the couple breaks up after that."

"Naturally..." Nabiki agreed ruefully. "Quite a clever tactic, actually... smarter than I would have given them credit for. But this time, they won't be using it on a pair of saps who didn't do their homework before the match. Excellent work, ladies."

"Thank you, Nabiki!" Kikuko chirped, visibly basking in the praise, with Ryonami smiling smugly beside her.

"Now, the match will be at Kolhotz High on Monday... do you think you can arrange to take care of the profit side of things for me...?"

* * *

Sunday...

* * *

With just one day left until the match, Genma had, reluctantly, conceded that it was time for Nabiki to take a break, lest she stress her body too much to actually fight. So Nabiki was, instead of some insane physical training, doing something she would normally do on a Sunday; curl up in front of the TV and watch anime with a can of juice and some snacks.

She was so engrossed in this - it was her favorite series - that she didn't realized Ranma had crept along and sat down next to her until he stole one of her snacks just as she was about to take it. "Gah! Where did you come from?" she yelped, instinctively starting away from him.

"The door ," was Ranma's attempt at a pithy reply, smirking as he crunched down the rice cracker.

"Wise guy... remind me to get you a bell after we sort this mess out," Nabiki scoffed, rolling her eyes but unable to keep a small grin off of her face.

"Remind me to tell you about some of my dad's lessons in stealth," Ranma quipped back.

"Ugh, please don't. I've only had to put up with him for five days - I can't imagine doing it for your entire life," Nabiki said, only partially exaggerating her shudder.

"It's not all bad," Ranma replied, if only because he felt he had to. They sat together in silence for a while, watching the TV, before Ranma hesitantly asked, "So... are you nervous?"

"About what?"

"About the fight tomorrow. It's your first time, an' all that..."

Nabiki bit back a giggle at the unwitting double entendre. "Ah, that. No, I'm not worried... why would I be? I'll have you there to beat them up for me," she quipped, poking Ranma in the shoulder.

"Ah," Ranma shrugged, visibly unsure of what to say in the face of that. In fact, he looked so uncertain that Nabiki felt obligated to elaborate.

"Look, Ranma; I wasn't thrilled about being dragged into this, and I'm still not. But I have every faith that you're going to win. You've been training hard all week, and I know firsthand just how ridiculously good you are at getting better. Your dad's been showing me how to keep out of harm's way, so they won't lay a finger on me. All I have to do is smile and look pretty while you turn that pervert and his bimbo into smears on the ice. Okay?"

Ranma visibly brightened up at Nabiki's words, smiling as he gave her a look filled with wonder. "You're incredible, Nabiki," he marveled.

"And don't you forget it," she smugly shot back. "Now pipe down; this show is just starting to get good."

Ranma smiled and made himself comfortable. He had no idea what this anime was, but right this moment, he couldn't think of anything he'd rather do than sit here and watch it with his fiancée.

* * *

Monday...

* * *

Finally, it was the day. A full week had come and gone since Ranma and Nabiki's unwelcome encounter at the ice rink, and now they had come to Kolhotz High School, ready to settle things. With the rumor mill fed by Kikuko and Ryonami at Nabiki's behest, many of the other students from Furinkan High were also there. Ranma having a match was reason enough for many to come, since the boy had unofficially established himself as Furinkan High's new champion since his arrival, but the idea that Nabiki was somehow going to be a part of the match - not just running the bets, but actually fighting?! Well, that had the Furinkan High students running!

...Admittedly, more than a few were hoping to see the Ice Queen take a thorough pounding, but nobody was dumb enough to verbalize such hopes!

The two fighters from Furinkan had just arrived at Kolhotz. They stood in front of the sign directing interested parties to the gymnasium, drinking in what was written there.

"The Charlotte Cup, eh?" Nabiki drawled.

"Yeah... who'da thought all this nonsense would happen because of Ryoga?" Ranma agreed.

"Ranma? Nabiki? Issat you!?"

Nabiki blinked, turning in the direction of the voice they'd just heard. "Speak of the devil..." she muttered.

Ranma himself stared dumbfounded as Ryoga came racing up to them, a look of wild desperation on his face.

"Oh, man, it is you! Listen, Ranma, I know we got off on the wrong foot... but you gotta win this! Please!" Ryoga begged, literally throwing himself down on his knees and begging Ranma.

"What the hell?! What happened to you, Ryoga?" Ranma blurted out. Not just from the sheer shock of the proud rival he remembered from Junior High actually and literally begging for help, but because Ryoga had traded in his usual travel-worn apparel for a sleeveless green Chinese shirt, a pair of studded black armbands around his forearms, a gold-edged green bandanna around his forehead, flowing green pants cinched with yellow bands around his knees and ankles, and... a little pink collar around his neck?! Complete with a red love-heart ornament and leash?!

"It's that crazy kook, Azusa! She's had me prisoner for a week, ever since you beat up Mikado and then left!" Ryoga cried. "I can't get away from her - it's like she can sense my every move!"

"But.. what about turning into a human? Shouldn't that have let you escape?" Nabiki pointed out.

"Yeah, except Azusa was the one who changed me back. And she might be crazy, but she's not stupid enough to think we're not one and the same! She doesn't care if I'm a human or a pig; I'm still her 'Charlotte'," Ryoga grizzled.

"...You entirely sure you want us to save you?" Ranma asked.

"Don't even joke about that, Ranma!" Ryoga snapped frantically, looking around wildly like a hunted animal. "I tell you, it's been hell! You have no idea the kind of torments I've endured! She keeps me in her room at all times, unless she decides my pig-form would be perfect to go out with her! She feeds me by hand, and makes me sleep in her bed - she even damn well bathes me! She forces me to play games with her, and watch the most saccharine, girly anime and movies I've ever been forced to sit through!"

"Wow, yeah, it sounds like you've had it sooo rough," Nabiki dryly drawled.

Ryoga exploded up from the ground, grabbing Ranma by the shirt with both hands and shaking him. "You've got to win this, you hear? I can't be her plaything for the rest of my life!" he howled desperately.

"Charlotte! Naughty Charlotte, what are you doing without Azusa? You know you can't run off, Charlotte!"

"Oh, crap!" Ryoga wailed, before turning and running in a random direction. But it wasn't enough to save him. Ranma and Nabiki watched as Azusa suddenly zipped past on rollerskates, brandishing a water pistol and firing it at Ryoga, then scooped up the disorientated pig without even breaking stride from her skating.

"...Suddenly, I'm a little more sympathetic to Ryoga's plight," Ranma confessed with a disquieted expression on his face..That just wasn't right.

"Yeah, no kidding... but we won't do anything about it just standing here. You better get to the men's dressing room, Ranma; I'll see you on the rink when it's time for the match," Nabiki said.

"Alright, yeah, see ya, Nabiki," Ranma replied, and then jogged off in the direction he'd been told to go.

Nabiki began to head in the direction of the women's dressing room... and then stopped as she realized something. ' _I could have asked him for a kiss for good luck! Dammit, Nabiki!'_

Only her need to protect her image kept her from dope-slapping herself at the realization.

* * *

In the men's dressing room...

* * *

"Mr. Saotome; you finally made it," Mikado declared, spinning suavely in his seat to face Ranma as his opponent walked through the door.

Ranma responded by flippantly raising a hand in greeting and nonchalantly replying, "Yo, Mikado the molester! How's it going?" He didn't even try to hide his smirk as Mikado nearly fell backwards off of his seat in shock.

"It's Sanzenin, you idiot!" Mikado snapped, the suave and debonair mask he cultivated at all times cracking in his rage as he leapt to his feet, fists clenched. But then, as quickly as he'd given in, he reined himself back in, turning his back pointedly on Ranma to look into the mirror and start fixing his hair with his comb.

"Your booboos all better now?" Ranma mockingly asked as he put his backpack down and began withdrawing his outfit for the match.

Mikado actually managed to chuckle at Ranma's insult. "I merely let my guard down for a moment, that's all. The real match will be a different story. Your charming partner... Nabiki Tendo, isn't that her name?"

Ranma blinked at the sudden change in topic from the usual pre-match trash-talk, letting out a wordless noise of vague confirmation.

Still fixated on his reflection, Mikado conversationally observed, "I still haven't given your partner my special greeting."

Now Ranma turned fully to his opponent. "Greeting?" he repeated in his confusion.

"The girl hasn't been born who doesn't welcome my special greeting," Mikado purred, visibly luxuriating in pleasant memories.

The memories his words conjured in Ranma's mind were nowhere near so pleasant. Suppressed images of his first encounter with the sickeningly suave youth, and in particular what he'd interrupted him doing before their first battle, flooded into Ranma's brain in a wash of dark realization. "Your greeting? You don't mean..." he began.

Now, finally, Mikado turned to Ranma. "One more," he declared, holding up an index finger for emphasis, his eyes burning holes into Ranma's soul. "One more, and I shall have kissed one thousand girls, each more gorgeous than the last!" he bragged.

That confirmation was the final spark to light the tinder of Ranma's rage. "No you don't!" he snarled, fists snapping up into a pre-punch pose in his rage.

"You will hear me out!" Mikado declared, the steel in his words shocking enough that Ranma bit back his instinct to just take the lecher's head off right here and right now. "At some point during today's match, I shall surely steal a kiss from the lips of Nabiki Tendo," he vowed, aura twinkling to life around him with the passion of his promise.

"Don't you think of anything other than kissing girls?" a disgusted Ranma asked in exasperation.

Mikado merely made a dismissive gesture. "What else is there worth thinking about?" he responded flatly.

His response actually shocked Ranma out of his protective mode, and he started at the other youth with a mixture of surprise, resignation and disgust. ' _Geeze, this guy's almost scary...'_

* * *

Time for the match...

* * *

The Kolhotz gym was packed, with seating clustered around what had originally been the school's swimming pool until it had been reconfigured into the rink for today's match. Students from Kolhotz and Furinkan rubbed shoulders with each other and even with a smattering of visitors from elsewhere, drawn by the lure of gossip or their membership in either Azusa or Mikado's fan clubs. The air reverberated with music playing from the speakers around the gym, augmenting rather than obscuring the buzz of excited whispers and gossip.

Practically invisible amongst the crowd, the occupants of the Tendo dojo - Soun, Kasumi, Akane and Genma Saotome - were all impatiently settled into their seats.

"Oh, it's so exciting, isn't it, father?" Kasumi chirped, clasping her hands together. It had been... well, a very long time since she'd been out to a spectacle like this. The heady atmosphere of anticipation had her quite giddy.

"Oh, Nabiki... please be careful!" Soun muttered to himself, eyes dripping with unshed tears of concern for his frail and innocent daughter, too distracted to listen to Kasumi.

"I still don't feel right letting Nabiki go through with this," Akane grumbled.

"Pah! My son will keep her safe. Have a little faith in your brother-in-law, Akane," Genma boomed, making Akane grit her teeth.

The announcer tapped his microphone, and then leaned forward to start speaking into it. " _ **Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Charlotte Cup! The Martial Arts Figure Skating fight to the finish to determine ownership of the pig named 'Charlotte'! And now let me introduce our competitors!"**_

From his position chained to the golden trophy cup, Ryoga squealed forlornly. He gave his bindings an experimental tug, but resigned himself to needing to wait for Ranma and Nabiki to win the match. This was humiliating... he was supposed to be Ranma's worst enemy, damnit! Why did he have to hope for Ranma, of all people, to save him?!

" _ **Representing Kolhotz High, it's the Golden Pair, the undefeated Emperor Sanzenin and his consort, the delightful Azusa Shiratori!"**_

The lights went out, and spotlights lit up as new music began to play, signalling the debut appearance of the Golden Pair. Down a multicolored "catwalk" of lights they skated, hand-in-hand and moving with perfect synchronization, until Mikado suddenly picked Azusa up and perched her on his outstretched left arm, gliding across the ice to the cheers and applause of an appreciative audience. His own fanclub in particular went wild, cheering and calling declarations of love, to which Mikado blew them kisses, whilst Azusa's fan-club struck up a rhythmic chant of her name, causing her to give them a cute wink before the Golden Pair drew to a stop, with Azusa dropping to the ice.

From their position, Ranma and Nabiki watched the whole affair. "Show offs," Ranma grumbled.

"Now, Ranma; they may be jerks, but they're also legitimately skilled. Don't go underestimating them," Nabiki chided him.

"Sorry, Nabiki..." Ranma apologized. Before he could get any further, a spotlight illuminated them both, the obvious signal for their own entry to the rink. "Come on; we'll show these two a lesson they won't forget," he vowed... then he reached out and swept Nabiki up onto his shoulder.

Despite everything, Nabiki couldn't help a flutter of nervousness as Ranma shifted under her; she knew, abstractly, that Ranma could really learn when he put his mind to it, and she'd come a long way from the defenseless nobody she'd been after a week in his father's dubious care, but could Ranma actually skate?

She got her answer when Ranma surged forward, almost flying across the ice, much faster than Mikado and Azusa had gone. ' _Huh, that practice paid -_ _ **OFF!?**_ ' Nabiki's thought surged into panic as Ranma suddenly launched her skywards.

For a moment, she was too scared to even scream... but then the training kicked in and she instinctively began to twist into a forward flip. As she spun through the air, she caught glimpses of Ranma bounding across the ice in a series of rapid-pace forward flips, leaping from hands to feet and back again, but she pushed that aside to concentrate on controlling her descent.

To her own private amazement, she actually pulled off a perfect four-point landing... which became all the more impressive when she realized that she hadn't landed on the ice, but in Ranma's upstretched hand. He twisted in a full circle, spinning her around like a dancing ballerina toy, and then lowered her to the floor smoothly, allowing her to daintily step back onto the rink.

"And here, representing Furinkan High, are Ranma Saotome and Nabiki Tendo!"

From their place in the ringside seats, where they were frantically running the bets, Kikuko and Ryonami stared dumbfounded at the feat they had just witnessed, comparing it to Ranma's absolute hopelessness of a week prior. "Remind me to never, ever bet against Ranma learning anything martial arts related again," Ryonami breathed in shock, Kikuko mutely nodding her agreement.

Genma glanced at Akane, and then smirked at the dumbfounded look on her face. "Still have doubts that Ranma will look after her?" he gloated.

Down in the rink, Akane wasn't the only one stupefied by what they'd just seen. "How did such a thug improve so quickly?!" Mikado hissed to himself.

Azusa merely glared at the two. "Those two meanies... they're not taking my Charlotte away!" she vowed.

 _ **CLANG!**_

"And there's the bell! The battle for the pet black pig begins! Remember; this is a no-holds-barred single match competition, people!"

"No holds barred, hm?" Nabiki purred. "Sounds like the Anything-Goes School has the advantage, eh, Ranma?" she quipped, brushing a flirtatious hand against her fiancé's cheek.

To her surprise, instead of playing along, Ranma shuddered. "Please, Nabiki... don't do that again," he pleaded.

' _...Well, that was random...'_ Nabiki thought. But she didn't have long to muse on it, because Ranma suddenly jetted off, and she had to race to follow. Even if the plan was to let Ranma handle the bulk of the fighting, visibly lagging behind would just make her an obvious target.

Mikado and Azusa skated straight at their Furinkan High foes, Azusa riding on Mikado's backwards-stretched hands. Ranma sprang at Mikado in a diving kick, but Azusa simply leapt from Mikado's hands to dodge the attack, whilst Mikado evaded with a subtle twist. As Ranma skidded along the rink, fighting to simultaneously stop and keep his balance, Mikado shot towards the startled Nabiki, nimbly weaving around her and catching her by the waist, tilting her backwards so that he could look her in the eyes.

"Might I say you're looking particularly lovely today," he purred seductively.

" _ **Emperor Sanzenin wastes no time in launching his famous Kiss Attack!"**_ cried the announcer, to the obvious dismay of Mikado's fangirls.

"...Yeah, **no** ," Nabiki replied icily, before driving her fist into Mikado's closest kidney, simultaneously folding him over and using that to propel herself out of his now-slack grip.

" _ **Rejected! That's a true first for Emperor Sanzenin!"**_

"Serves you right, you pervert!" Akane crowed from her seat in the stands. "Nice work, Nabiki!"

"Wow, I didn't know the boss had it in her," Kikuko confessed to Ryonami, who nodded her agreement.

"Stupid Mikky! Fight now, flirt later!" Azusa screamed at her erstwhile partner, even as she directed a rapid-fire set of spin-kicks at Ranma, who blocked each blow and then retaliated with a snap-punch... which she deftly dodged, much to Ranma's frustration.

' _Great. I spent all that time learning to skate, and I forgot to learn how to actually fight on skates! Slippery pair of jerks are better at dodging on this surface than I am at hitting 'em...'_

Unfortunately for Nabiki, Mikado was nothing if not persistent. With almost Kuno-like tenacity, he bounced back from her kidney-punch and, winning smile fixed on his face again, he skated after her. "Aw, poor thing - don't be shy! I'm a lover, not a fighter!"

"That is the lamest pick-up line I've ever heard!" Nabiki spat back, skating off as quickly as she could.

Seeing Mikado going after his fiancée, Ranma saw red. "You stay away from her, ya skirt-chasing kiss-stealing blue-blooded snot-nosed prick!" he snarled, charging across the ice with the subtlety and grace of a stampeding bull, aiming himself like a human missile right at Mikado.

From his position at the trophy display, Ryoga waved a hoof dismissively. ' _Meh... I'd give it a 3 out of 5.'_

To Ranma's irritation, Mikado simply evaded him, twisting away into a long curving arc. Ranma chose not to chase after him, instead skating over to rejoin his fiancée. "You okay, Nabiki?"

"Yeah; as far as I'm concerned, he'll be harmless. Pervert like that would never raise an actual hand to a cute girl," Nabiki assured him.

"Now, Nabiki... brace yourself! I will have my kiss!"

Nabiki glanced over at the sound of Mikado's voice and blanched. "Then again, I could be wrong!" she yelped.

Ranma followed her gaze and his eyes went wide as he saw Mikado careening towards him, spinning Azusa around and around like a human flail. But in an instant, he had figured out an opportunity; he grabbed Nabiki's hand and began skating towards the spinning Golden Pair.

"Ranma?!"

"Nabiki, get ready to fly!" he called back over his shoulder.

Trusting her fiancé's instincts for combat, Nabiki nodded and hopped up against Ranma's back, allowing him to reach back and grab her under the shoulders before hurling her in a massive arc towards the ceiling.

As she soared through the air, she watched as Ranma continued charging right for Mikado, who this time was unable to make any clever last-second dodges. Ranma ducked beneath Azusa's legs before they could smack him across the face, and delivered a straight-armed punch right into Mikado's stomach, momentum adding extra "oomph" to his blow.

'Take that, you miserable lech!' Nabiki cheered in the privacy of her mind, even as she dropped gracefully through the air and landed on Ranma's broad, welcoming shoulders and back. Well, "gracefully" might be a bit of a stretch, but Ranma caught her before she hit the ground, so that was important. Although his sudden skid-start as he pivoted on his blade like a pylon did nearly jerk her out of his grip - evidently, Ranma still wasn't in the same league as the Golden Pair when it came to actually skating.

Behind them, Mikado's grip slipped on Azusa, who went flying and deftly saved herself as her partner collapsed onto his knees, clutching where Ranma had punched him with one hand and groaning in pain.

As they watched, Azusa deftly skated back over to Mikado. "Mikky? Does him hurt here?" she asked, poking at the skater's obviously sore side repeatedly and bringing tears to his eyes... before, still intermittently asking "Here? Here?", she began to punch him in the side, eliciting gasps of pain and shock from Mikado.

"Yes, it hurts - it hurts I said!" Mikado groaned. When this failed to stop Azusa from pounding on his side, adrenaline brought him surging to his feet. "I told you it hurts! Stop hitting me there, you silly wench!" he roared, bellowing into Mikado's face.

Incredibly, rather than flinching back and putting on her cute girl act, Azusa simply glared right back at him. "Then maybe Mikky will take this seriously! Little Azusa will be so mad if you cost her my Charlotte!"

"Trouble in paradise? Is the Golden Pair having a lover's quarrel?" Nabiki called out, deliberately projecting her voice to the audience in order to better mock her opponents.

Both Mikado and Azusa recoiled at the admittedly rather common mistake. "We are not a couple!" Mikado snapped, although his pride recoiled at the childishly exaggerated way that Azusa agreed by nodding, covering her hands with her stomach as if she felt physically ill, sticking out her tongue and crossing her eyes in disgust.

Quickly, though, Mikado forced himself to get back under control, putting on a suave smirk. "Well done, Mr. Saotome. It is rare that I am ever brought to my knees," he confessed. "But you will regret it."

"You don't stop trying to pull that kissing junk with Nabiki, and I'll do more than bring you to your knees," Ranma darkly warned his foe.

"Oh really? Such as?" Mikado scoffed; he'd heard this sort of talk more than once before.

"Such as putting your lady-killing butt straight into a coffin!" Ranma snapped. "Got it!? Nabiki is my fiancée! You touch her, and I'll kill ya!" he snarled.

Nabiki fought in vain to keep the blush from showing on her face, cursing the butterfly swarm that chose that moment to start having a ballet inside her stomach. This was ridiculous... she'd never been the "handsome prince on a white steed" sort of girl. So why did hearing Ranma say something like that reach deep down inside of her and touch all the right buttons?

"So romantic!" Kikuko and Ryonami cooed, staring at their boss and her fiancé with dewy eyes. For a single brief moment, they wondered if Nabiki would be averse to sharing... then reluctantly admitted that word wasn't in her vocabulary.

"Hey! Don't go saying stuff like that in public, ya jerk!" Akane yelled, red with mortification for her sister's sake.

"Oh, my! They really are a good match, aren't they, father?" Kasumi marveled, the faintest hint of crimson dusting her own cheeks. 'Nabiki is so lucky to have a boy who cares for her like Ranma does...'

"Hahaha! That's my son-in-law!" Soun chortled gleefully, now dripping with tears of joy.

Genma simply glowed with smug pride.

Down in the rink, oblivious to the family drama above, Mikado simply scoffed. "Well, fiancées aren't forever," he chuckled.

He began to methodically crack his knuckles, oozing suave, sophistication and menace as much as it was possible to do so when Azusa was childishly bouncing around behind him, pulling ugly faces at Ranma & Nabiki from over her partner's shoulders. "I, Mikado Sanzenin, will take it as a personal challenge to **break** those ties," he vowed, cackling like the villain he truly was.

"You can try," Ranma scoffed.

"I'll do better than that! She won't be yours much longer!" Mikado vowed, even as Azusa scrambled up onto his shoulders in a handstand-like pose. "We, the world-famous Golden Pair, have another nickname..."

"The Anti-Matchmakers!" Nabiki cheerfully interjected, to the shock of her opponents. She smirked at them with the grin of the cat that got the cream. "What, did you think we wouldn't do our homework? We know all about your reputation for focusing on breaking up your enemy team's partnership. We won't fall for a stupid gambit like that," she bragged, before deciding to rub salt in the wound by wrapping herself around Ranma's arm, hugging him close in a way that had the Furinkan students present boggling; who knew the Ice Queen could be so... spicy?!

"Oh, my! She really shouldn't be doing that in public!" Kasumi protested, cheeks red as she covered her mouth in shock.

"It's just a little healthy affection, nothing strange about it," Genma replied absently, carefully adjusting his video camera for a clearer shot.

"Wait, when did you bring that in?" Soun wondered, having just realized what his old friend was doing.

Mikado quickly regained his smug smirk. "So you say... but actions will always speak louder than words," he cautioned them.

" _ **Ladies and gentlemen, it's the moment we've all been waiting for! The Golden Pair's ultimate attack; the Couple Cleaver!"**_

Mikado took off skating, heading straight for his Anything Goes-practicing foes. "There's not a single couple we've ever faced on the ice-"

"-That has stayed together after we split them up!" Azusa finished, giggling with wicked glee.

"Come on, Nabiki; we'll show them who they're messing with!" Ranma gloated.

"Right behind you," she chuckled, skating off in unison with her fiancé. She was so caught up in the act that she even tried to copy Ranma when he tried a leaping kick at the Golden Pair - she landed safely, but without actually hitting anybody, as Mikado simply ducked and Azusa leapt straight up. But Nabiki had to let go of Ranma in order to land without falling, and that was when things went against them.

Looking back, she saw that Azusa had somehow belly-flopped onto Ranma in mid-air, forcing him to instinctively catch the burriko bitch in the process of saving himself. And it didn't take a genius to know what Azusa had in mind, not after what she'd heard about the Golden Pair's fighting style. "Oh crap! Ranma, get away from her!" Nabiki cried, instinctively racing over to try and grab Ranma out of harm's way.

"Nabiki! I swear, it's not!" Ranma blurted, unfortunately failing to realize what was actually bothering his fiancée.

"You're wide open!" Azusa mocked him sweetly, then swung herself across the ground and between Ranma's legs, grabbing his ankles and sending him careening face-first towards the rink's icy surface.

On pure instinct, Nabiki lunged for Ranma's hands and caught him, only to realize at the last moment what a mistake she'd made. Before she could let go, Mikado had skated up and grabbed Azusa's legs before he hoisted his partner aloft in an incredible feat of strength.

With the smoothness that spoke of how often they had not only practiced, but successfully used this move, he began to spin like a top, the centrifugal force traveling through Azusa and into both Ranma and Nabiki, turning them into the weighted end of a spinning flail.

"Say hello to the Goodbye Whirl!" Mikado cackled.

Ranma gritted his teeth; whilst as an Anything Goes practitioner, he'd trained for a lot of crazy situations, being spun around like this wasn't one of them! But it helped he had something else to focus onto - namely, clutching onto Nabiki's hands for dear life as he stared into her panic-stricken eyes.

" _ **Oh-ho! Take a good look, ladies and gentlemen; at last, the Golden Pair's dreaded final technique - the infamous Goodbye Whirl!"**_

"Listen to me, Ranma Saotome! Release the girl's hand and I'll stop spinning!" Mikado called.

"Go suck a lemon!" Ranma spat back.

"Yo might as well let her go - you can't hang on much longer anyway!" the male half of the Golden Pair taunted him.

"Sez you!"

"Ranma! Listen to him! Let me go!" Nabiki suddenly blurted out, drawing Ranma's incredulous gaze to her.

"What? No way! You'll go flying headfirst into the ice!" Ranma protested.

" _ **Here's where the Goodbye Whirl gets its name! If one partner betrays the other, than he or she will be spared! But what then? Oh, what a terrible way to end a relationship!"**_

"The more you trust each other, the greater the shock when you're betrayed! A couple caught in the Goodbye Whirl is doomed to disaster!" Mikado gloated.

"Rama, listen to me! It's a set-up; Mikado will grab me before I actually hit the ice and leave Azusa to pound you! This whole thing is a trick to mess with our heads and ruin our partnership! You can let me go!" Nabiki protested. ' _Oh, gods, I really hope Kikuko and Ryonami were right... I don't wanna go splat because they got bad intel!'_

"I don't care what their game is! I'm not letting you go!" Ranma spat furiously. "You're my fiancée! I'm not letting anybody hurt you!"

Nabiki's treacherous heart chose that moment to skip a beat, although if it was from terror or romantic overload, she couldn't say.

Unfortunately, no matter how determined Ranma was, there was one random element on the battlefield that even he couldn't contain, and her name was Azusa Shiratori. No couple they'd ever fought had managed to cling to each other for so long, and the girl's stamina for this kind of move had been taxed to her limit. "Oooh! Little Azusa is all worn out!" she moaned, even as she slackened her grip and let her victims go flying.

Nabiki screamed in fear as she felt the winds tearing at her dragging her backwards. She couldn't see behind her, but she knew that she was heading legs-first towards the surrounding rink wall. Horrible images of shattered limbs, of months in hospital or even permanent paralysis filled her mind's eye...

And then Ranma's grip on her wrists tightened as he pulled her forward and twisted around. His determined look was the last thing she saw before she spun around. An enormous crash filled her ears, secondly before her head slammed into something that was at once solid and giving - a painful shock, but not hard enough to actually damage her. Still, it scattered her senses, to the point she was barely cognizant of her side protesting as she fell from the air to land on the rink.

She regained full consciousness as a deep, hollow moan of pain drifted into her ears, dimly feeling something sliding past. Slowly and painfully, she sat up on her hip, trying to will the world back into focus... which was when she saw the crater indenting the wall, and Ranma's comatose form lying next to her, one hand still clamped in a deathgrip around her wrist. The world shrank away as that fact sank in, sounding as if it were all coming from far away.

" _ **Look at that! Challenger Saotome never let go of his partner! The Goodbye Whirl was a failure! But faithfulness has its price! Ranma Saotome has sustained serious injury!"**_

Being the Ice Queen of Furinkan? That meant nothing at this moment. Carefully, timidly, Nabiki laid a hand on Ranma's cheek, bending over him to look for the slightest sign of life. "Oh, no... Ranma? Ranma, please!" she pleaded, as a feeling she'd only ever felt once before in her life came creeping over her heart.

Off to the side, Mikado smirked, ignoring the dreamy way that Azusa was swaying back and forth. "I'm sure that every bone in his body must be crushed! Nothing human could have withstood that!" he gloated, even as Azusa finally succumbed to her dizziness and keeled over backwards with all the grace of a dying pigeon.

In the stands, Kikuko and Ryonami stared, mouths covered in horror. This... this wasn't what was supposed to happen!

"Nabiki..." Akane and Kasumi breathed in unconscious synchronization, staring at their obviously grief-stricken sibling.

Soun broke down and began bawling. "My son! My family!" he sobbed.

"Pull yourself together, Soun!" Genma snapped, giving his old friend a smack on the back of the head. "The boy's had worse hits than that! He'll be fine!"

"Ranma... you... no..." Nabiki whimpered, tears starting to fill her eyes. They hadn't known each other all that long, it was true, but she'd really grown to like him... and he was hurt because he was trying to do the noble thing and protect her, of all people! Most of the boys in Furinkan High wouldn't have spat on her if she was on fire, and she knew it. "Ranma... please, wake up! Open your eyes!" she sobbed. "Don't leave me alone...not like mom..."

And as she made that little connection, the well finally broke and she slumped forward, burying her face into Ranma's chest and weeping.

She was so caught up in her grief that she didn't notice when Ranma finally groaned and began to stir. ' _Oh... my achin'... everythin'. That fucking sucked...'_ he moaned in the depths of his head. Drawing on every single stamina trick he'd picked up over his life, every ki healing technique and pain blocking exercise he knew, he forced cracked bones to fuse and bruised muscles to repair themselves as fast as he could. ' _Gotta get back up... Nabiki - huh?'_ He registered the sound of weeping, and forced himself to open his eyes, dampening the pain as best he could.

The sight of Nabiki crying into his chest made his heart ache like somebody had put it in a vice; Genma had always told him that only a scumbag makes girls cry, and since he happened to actually like Nabiki, that just made it worse. "Nnngh...Nabiki?" he managed to say, reaching out and stroking her hair, simply because that was the best that his protesting limbs could still do at the moment.

She jolted as if electrified, snapping her head up and staring into his eyes with a wide-eyed, teary expression he'd never seen her wear before, and would give anything to never see again. "R-Ranma!?"

"Yeah, I'm okay, Nabiki," he said, trying to make her feel better, only to lose track of his train of thought as he watched the obvious relief wash over her face.

"But... how?" she babbled, too emotionally turbulent to be her normal articulate self.

"Pft. I've had harder love taps," Ranma assured her, before he settled his weight on his hands, kicked his legs straight up, swaying his torso like a pendulum before he sprang upwards to land on his feet. At once, his whole body quivered, a fresh spike of agony hammering through still-raw nerves as his still-healing frame protested the strain. But he bit back his cries and choked down the pain, with only the tears falling from his eyes betraying how much that little reassuring stunt had really cost him.

" _ **Incredible! Challenge Saotome is back on his feet, despite a catastrophic blow!"**_

"Is this guy some kind of monster?!" Mikado protested, horrifying visions of Ranma's inhuman feats of strength and durability from their first encounter flashing through his mind's eye.

"You jerk! Don't you **ever** scare me like that again!" Nabiki shrieked, nerves too raw to even think about what she was saying... or to stop her from doing what came next. Before Ranma could even register her words, Nabiki had pounced on him, grabbing him by the pigtail and bodily dragging his lips into hers in a passionate kiss.

"Oh my!" the crimson-cheeked Kasumi squeaked, covering her face with her hands as if too embarrassed to see, yet at the same time peeking between her fingers as her little sister gave her future brother-in-law the sort of ice-melting, firework-lighting kiss she'd only read about in the bodice-rippers that she kept hidden under her bed.

"Nabiki! Not in front of everybody!" Akane protested, as red-faced as her eldest sister.

"The schools! Joined! So happy!" Soun blubbered, one arm draped around Genma's shoulders for support, shaking his old friend in his excitement.

"Easy, Soun! I'm trying to get a good shot here!" Genma complained as he tried to shake the other man off him.

"You go, girl!" Kikuko and Ryonami whooped in encouragement, an act that many of the other audience members were doing; they had no idea of the particular history between these two teens, but the spectacle more than made up for that.

"Enough of this mockery! Let us fight!" the seething Mikado thundered, fists clenched into white-knuckled bundles of rage as he watched his foe receive that which Mikado had been seeking for the entirety of the match.

Finally, and perhaps coincidentally, Nabiki released Ranma's lips. "...Wow," she marveled softly to herself. It wasn't exactly her first kiss, but that had been more of a kiss than any she'd had before - especially when Ranma started kissing her back! Reluctantly, she forced herself to concentrate back on the present, particularly the unwelcome jerk that had been responsible for all of this. Looking into Ranma's eyes, she asked, "Are you sure you're up to taking them down?"

Ranma blinked sightlessly, then shook his head, visibly regathering his thoughts before he looked at Nabiki. "Wha? Oh! Yeah, you bet!"

' _Of course you'd say that... stubborn bastard; you'd try to keep fighting even if you had broken legs, wouldn't you?'_ Nabiki marveled. "Alright, then I need you to trust me, okay? I have a plan, but you have to believe that I know what I'm doing, understand?"

Ranma hesitated for just a moment, then nodded. "Gotcha. I trust you, Nabiki."

' _And you have no idea how special that makes you...'_ She mused to herself. "Alright, then watch what I do; you'll know when it's your moment to get involved," she told him.

Again, Ranma nodded. And at that signal, Nabiki turned and began skating off. Twisting around, she waved jauntily to Mikado. "Yoohoo, Mikado! Over here! I'm the one you want, aren't I? Come and get me!" she called in her best girly sing-song.

Snorting with a mixture of rage and lust, Mikado immediately rocketed after her.

"Oh, come on! You can't dump Ranma this soon after giving him a kiss like that!" Akane protested. ' _Just what the hell is going through Nabiki's head anyway...?'_

"The girl has a plan? Interesting... Ranma picked a good one," Genma rumbled approvingly, still filming the whole thing.

Nabiki literally led Mikado in circles, carefully gauging how hard she was pushing him. When he caught her, it... wasn't entirely because she'd let him, but she was confident that it was still in the area she wanted. She couldn't help the way her heart started to beat faster when Mikado grabbed her wrist, but she assured herself that she was in control.

"Now, Ms. Tendo, you're going to give me what I'm owed!" Mikado leered, his normal charm and sophistication washed away by frustration and rage.

"Oh, I have every intention of giving you what you deserve," Nabiki purred. And before Mikado could digest the implications of that, she called on everything she'd learned from her father, her sister and Mr. Saotome, dredging up all of her rage and fear and pouring it down her leg as she delivered the hardest kick she could imagine squarely into the fork of Mikado's legs.

Now, Mikado wore a cup. Even beyond the obvious practical connotations for somebody in his line of sports, he'd pissed off too many male and female opponents with his skirt-chasing ways to not realize that a protective casing for his "little emperor" was a good idea. But Nabiki had more of her little sister in her than she'd ever realized, and so even with that protective implement, Mikado's world exploded in fireworks of pure pain. The audience audibly winced or jeered at the sight as he cupped his most tender parts and sank into a squat, barely able to keep from collapsing onto the ice.

"Ranma, now!"

Dread roughly elbowed the pain aside in Mikado's world as those words sank in. With the grim reluctance of a man facing the hangman's noose, he turned to watch his doom approaching; Ranma Saotome, skating towards him at top speed, wearing an evil grin. Crippled by the searing pain in his nethers, Mikado could do nothing to save himself, and the last thing he saw was Ranma's fist flying straight into his face, the blow picking him up off of the ground and launching him into the wall with enough force to leave his own crater.

Mikado was out cold by the time he hit the rink.

"And then there was one," Nabiki smirked, turning to Azusa. "So, what's it going to be? You going to surrender? Or do we have to beat you into submission too?" she asked.

Ranma loomed behind her, making a show of cracking his knuckles as he stared dead-eyed at the female half of the Golden Pair. True, he didn't like to actually hit girls, but he of all people knew and appreciated the concept of "bluffing".

Azusa gritted her teeth, fists clenched until they were white-knuckled, visibly trembling with rage. The heirs to the Anything-Goes school watched her cautiously, waiting for her response.

" **Azusa hates you!** _**I hate you so much!**_ " she screamed, stamping her feet, features screwed up in rage, the verbal explosion going off like a small bomb and making them both skip backwards in shock at the sheer volume pouring from the petite pugilist. "But I'm not stupid either... Azusa..." she broke out into tears, letting them stream down her face as her voice trembled, "Azusa surrenders!" she spat.

Then she spun on her heel and skated off, leaving her presumably ex-partner behind on the ice.

" _ **Incredible! A legend has been broken! A streak of 950 consecutive wins ends in defeat at the hand of two unknowns! The Golden Pair has lost! Victory goes to Ranma Saotome and Nabiki Tendo!"**_

The stadium erupted into auditorial pandemonium as the audience reacted to that. Cheering, booing, clapping, whistling, a hundred different responses filled the air as Nabiki, with perfect showman's instincts, raised her and Ranma's arms triumphantly into the air and led her battered, bruised boyfriend off the rink and to the trophy presentation.

* * *

Soon afterwards, in the boy's dressing room...

* * *

Ryoga sighed blissfully as he stretched his arms to their fullest, visibly grateful to be back in his human form. "I can't believe I'm saying this," he grizzled, "but... thanks, Ranma."

"Hey, man, I couldn't just leave you like that. Besides, Mikado went and made it personal," Ranma added as an afterthought.

"So I saw," Ryoga dryly observed. "Actually... you did pretty well out there yourself, Nabiki. You going to take up training for real?" he asked inquisitively.

"When pigs fly," she immediately shot back. "This was a once-off thing. There's in no way I am ever getting mixed up in this kind of thing on the regular - that's Ranma's job." Despite her words, she was smiling, and Ranma himself didn't exactly seem heartbroken by the idea that Nabiki would be staying out of harm's way.

"So... I don't suppose you have the key to this stupid thing?" Ryoga asked hopefully, fingering the collar locked around his neck.

Ranma blinked in realization, then instinctively rifled through his pockets. Finding nothing, he turned a hopeful look to Nabiki, wilting when she shook her head.

Ryoga's shoulders slumped. "Great. I guess I'll just have to try and find somebody who can cut it off, then..."

"Charlotte!"

'Oh, no...' ran through three heads simultaneously, as Ryoga, Ranma and Nabiki all reluctantly turned to face Azusa Shiratori.

"How many times do I have to tell you? My name is Ryoga! And what do you want, anyway?" Ryoga snapped.

Azusa sniffled, her once-lovely eyes red and puffy; she'd obviously been crying. Meekly, she held out a key. "Here...Azusa brought her little key for Ryoga."

"You did?!" Ryoga asked incredulously, brightening as she nodded.

"Well, get over here and take it off!" he told her brusquely.

Mutely, the female skater approached Ryoga, who bent over to facilitate her reaching up and unlocking the collar. Azusa did exactly that... and then, before Ryoga could move away, she flung her arms around his neck and hauled herself upright to plant a passionate kiss on his lips!

Rama and Nabiki simply watched in shock as Azusa clung to Ryoga like a limpet, the Eternally Lost Boy frozen in shock as Azusa moaned and whimpered into his mouth. Finally, she let him go, casting a hopeful look up at Ryoga's face, and then visibly slumping at his stunned expression. "I'll miss you, Ryoga," she sobbed, before bursting into tears and running away.

The dressing room was dead silent as the sound of Azusa's footsteps faded into the distance.

"...What the hell was that all about?!" Ranma blurted, holding out his arms and looking at Nabiki for an explanation.

"Beats me... I guess maybe Azusa thought of Charlotte as more than a pet?" Nabiki suggested, shrugging her shoulders. ' _Or at least a different kind of 'pet'... Wow.'_

"Yeah... yo, Ryoga? You in there? Hello?" Ranma asked, waving his hand in front of Ryoga's glazed over eyes, to no response. "...Big lug's fainted!"

"All that over one little kiss?" he mocked.

"I seem to recall you being rather out of it after one little kiss, Ranma," Nabiki observed, smirking as she did.

"Th-that was different!" Ranma blustered.

"Oh? How so?" Nabiki asked innocently, batting her eyelashes for good measure.

"...Because you were the one kissing me," Ranma shyly admitted.

"Aw, you say the sweetest things, Ranma," Nabiki giggled. Unable to resist, she slunk over and kissed him on the cheek before twining her arm around his.

"Of course... our family did see what I did out there," she admitted, and here her facade cracked a little to let her nerves shine through. ' _I'm a big girl now, but daddy never was good at accepting that kind of thing...'_

Ranma visibly wilted. "Oh, great... maybe we can run away?" he suggested hopefully.

"No, they'd find us in the end. Come on, Ranma; time to face the music. I promise, I won't let daddy hurt you," Nabiki giggled.

Despite himself, Ranma smiled, and the two fiancées left the dressing room, leaving the still comatose Ryoga in their wake.

* * *

 **Chapter End & Closing Notes**

* * *

Quite the change up from canon! I won't lie, I did initially consider just skipping past this story... but then I contemplated the big moment where Ranma and Akane fall afoul of the Goodbye Whirl in canon, pictured what this Nabiki would do in Akane's place, and... well, a chapter was born!

Because I'm sure somebody's going to ask it, let me answer this off the bat; Ranma is so much more aggressive about Mikado's kiss in this story because, ironically, he's more sensitive to it than he would have been in canon. In canon, Ranma by this point has had Kuno confess his love to "the pigtailed girl" complete with flowers, and been repeatedly glomped or hit on by him. Additionally, in canon, by the time of his kiss with Mikado, Ranma has both seen Mikado's lechery in practice (albeit directed at Akane) and learned of his skills as a Martial Arts Figure Skater. In this verse, none of that happened. Ranma's not had Kuno's "help" in desensitizing himself to the idea that hornballs WILL try and get gropey with his girlside, nor was he aware that Mikado's a lech - that added element of surprise, and the fact that he got kissed on what was supposed to be a date with his fiancée, meant that Ranma took it a LOT worse than he did in canon.

Likewise, Ranma staying conscious enough to get himself and Nabiki into the match... well, okay, it is for plot purposes, but mostly it's Ranma burning his reserves a lot more intensely than in canon, to try and put on a better show for Nabiki. It's a side-effect of this Ranma feels even more humiliated than his canon counterpart did. It also paid him back with a comparatively slow recovery.

And Ranma's increased skating skill can be attributed to a much more driven Ranma with much more time spent on training, whereas we don't get any real impression of any time spent on the ice after that disastrous first lesson in canon.

And with this story complete, it's time for what you've all been waiting for; the second major landmark of Ranma 1/2 canon, the arrival of Ranma's first "real" rival fiancée, the debut of Shampoo! Let's see how having a non-tsundere but also non-fighter fiancée affects things... I hope you're all looking forward to it!


	10. From China With Hate!

Authors Notes: Firstly, I want to thank you all for the warm welcome you gave the previous chapter! I was worried about, so I'm glad to see that folks enjoyed it. I know Nabiki is firmly established in canon as a distinct non-combatant, but, let's be honest, canon also portrays Nabiki as so shortsightedly greedy that she will invite Akane's romantic rivals to Akane's wedding because she was hoping they'd bring the traditional cash gifts and she could nick them. Given both the Tendo family's establishment as a family of martial artists, and the weird array of martial arts in canon, I hoped there would not be too many people put off by Nabiki being able to make any progress in martial arts at all. She's not going to be Ranma's match any time soon, but at the same time, that doesn't mean she can't be better at it than she'd thought if she'd actually give it a go. So, sorry Elsil. It's not as if Nabiki (or even Kasumi) secretly still having/being martial artists is new in Ranma fanfiction, but I intend to emphasize that, even if Nabiki has a talent, she's very much a newcomer to this "world" and she's going to lag behind throughout the fic.

Secondly, to those wondering if Azusa and Ryoga are going to hook up? ...Maybe. I'm still feeling out how I'm going to juggle showing the life of our cast outside of Ranma and Nabiki - as much as purists loathe them, I do appreciate the sentiment behind the anime filler episodes that let our secondary cast members get a little extra time in the sun.

HunterQwon: If there are Kenichi: History's Strongest Disciple gags in the previous chapter, it's purely a coincidence. I never could get into that series. It's more the fact that Genma did the psycho-yet-weirdly-effective martial arts sensei thing first.

Jack Inqu: Do remember, Akane may not be as terrible as fanon frequently portrays her, but she's not exactly that high a peak to reach, either. Akane-level or better characters kind of pop frequently throughout both canons. Hell, the anime has Temari Kaminarimon, who can go toe-to-toe with Akane (albeit with some trickery)... despite being all of 6 years old. I mean, yes, Martial Arts will never be Nabiki's primary strength or her go-to problem-solving method - but that doesn't mean she's going to be a complete damsel in distress, either...

Silverhawk88: Really, if you look at the canon, it's kind of obvious that all of the Tendo girls have been scarred by the loss of their mother in some way, it's just not something Takahashi likes to dwell on overmuch.

Y. Honey: Eh... I wouldn't go quite that far. I mean, even in canon, Ranma was flustered by Shampoo's cuteness & honest affection for him, and was a little upset by how she ended up being chased back to China. I don't think I'd ever call Ranma & Akane's relationship "rock solid"... "held together with authorial fiat and sporadic bonding moments" has always been more honest to me. I mean, yes, Ranma & Nabiki's relationship at this point is more potent than Ranma & Akane's was in canon, but that doesn't mean they're completely fixed together just yet.

Elsil: To be honest, I actually struggled to decide how to respond to your review. Suffice it to say that I console you to be patient; a certain amount of setting things up is required to begin really taking things off of the rails, simply because this story is actually not that divergent from its base concept. Once our major players are assembled, then things will start to really go off the rails, but you should start seeing some major divergences with this chapter. As for my writing Shampoo... I take you're unfamiliar with my earlier work?

Radical Dreamer 57: I think you're forgetting how the canon version of that storyline went. Firstly; in canon, Ranma fell completely unconscious after the Dance of Death, if only because he slipped trying to stand up and fell on his head again. Secondly, Ranma was knocked out after taking the Goodbye Whirl impact in canon, and was so badly hurt afterwards that Akane actually wanted him to quit the field and let her fight with Ryoga so he wouldn't get hurt anymore. Finally, in canon, Akane also broke down in tears because she thought Ranma had been legitimately seriously hurt or even killed by the Goodbye Whirl, and Akane arguably knows what martial artists are capable of better than Nabiki! Plus, Ranma actually didn't take down Mikado in either continuity; in the manga, Ryoga did it, whilst in the anime, Azusa did it. So, no, I did not "nerf" Ranma or buff the Golden Pair.

* * *

 _ **Chapter 10: From China With Hate! Behold; the Chinese Amazon, Shampoo!**_

* * *

As euphoric as their first kiss had been, that didn't mean that life immediately leapt to make Ranma and Nabiki's relationship smoother. Despite Ranma's sincere intentions of taking Nabiki out on a real date to make up for the one that Mikado and Azusa had unwittingly ruined, they first had to deal with little things like letting Ranma's bones finish knitting, and catching up with school work they'd missed after a week off.

So, it wasn't until later in the week that the two fiancées were finally able to get on with that date. To Nabiki's pleasure - she did, after all, have a sweet tooth; it was her primary vice - Ranma had taken them to an ice cream parlor named "Pand". True, some clumsy idiot had tripped and spilled their glass of cold water all over her date's head, but Nabiki had rather resigned herself to little incidents like that. So long as Ranma wasn't going to make a big deal out of it, then neither was she.

"Here you are, Miss; one hot fudge sundae, as requested," the waiter said, placing the delectable consumable in front of Nabiki.

Nabiki licked her lips in anticipation, picking up her spoon and was about to start eating when she realized that Ranma had received no similar treat, and was instead merely paying for her sundae. "Ranma? Where's yours?" she asked in confusion.

"Eh? Oh, um... I wasn't going to have any," Ranma admitted sheepishly.

At that, Nabiki rolled her eyes. "Ranma... just because you're paying for it does not mean you don't get to have any. It's not a real date if I'm the only one eating," she scolded him...her. Whatever. ' _Otherwise, that would mean those little luncheons Kuno paid for would count as dates... blech!'_ Nabiki had a full body shudder at the idea of 'dating' the buffoon who called himself 'the Blue Thunder'.

"Oh! Um... kay. Mister? Could I get a hot fudge sundae too?" Ranma asked the waiter, who simply nodded.

Nabiki smiled and took a spoonful of her treat, savoring the creamy richness of vanilla ice cream paired with chocolate fudge sauce. Shortly afterwards, the waiter returned with Ranma's ice cream, with the boy-turned-girl visibly excited as the fluted glass was placed in front of her.

"Oh, wow! I've always wanted to try one of these!" she confessed, before wolfing down a huge spoonful. At that, her eyes lit up with joy and she actually let out a girlish squeal of delight. "Yummy! Oh, man, that's even better than I'd ever dreamed!"

"Take it easy, Ranma, it's just vanilla and chocolate fudge sauce... what, you've never had a sundae before?" Nabiki playfully chided her fiancée.

"Nope. I've never had ice cream before," Ranma explained, gobbling down another spoonful and nearly choking on it at the horrified shriek of " _ **WHAT?!"**_ that erupted from her tablemate. "Ow, my ears! Nabiki? What was that all about?" Ranma complained, looking over at the table... and recoiling at the look of dumbfounded horror on her fiancée's face.

 _Nabiki-dot-exe has experienced a fatal error. Please reboot your system... rebooting..._

Nabiki shook her head to clear it, grimacing as she reached up to rub her temples with her fingers. "Tell me what you just said, Ranma. Because I didn't hear you correctly. I **can't** have heard you correctly!"

"...Are you feeling okay, Nabiki?" Ranma hesitantly replied. "You're acting a little weird..."

"Answer the question!" Nabiki snapped, smacking the table with her hand as she stared at Ranma with a fire that Ranma wasn't used to seeing in his more collected fiancée. "Did you really just utter something so outrageous?!"

"Outrageous?! What, when I said I'd never had ice cream before!?" an incredulous Ranma replied. "Dad always said guys shouldn't eat ice cream... said it wasn't manly."

"Your father is a **monster** ," Nabiki flatly shot back, resolving to deal with Genma's... _horrid_ ideas of what foods were appropriate later. "That is the most nonsensical thing I've ever heard in my life... nobody should be denied ice cream, no matter what their gender is!" she shook her head in denial, feeling unshed tears prick her eyes at the very thought. "

Listen to me, Ranma... there are people who think that boys shouldn't enjoy sweet things. Do you know what the name for such people is?" she asked her genderfluid fiancé, staring straight into her eyes as she did.

"...No?" Ranma hesitantly replied, more...apprehensive of his fiancée at this moment than he had been when facing an entire martial arts school his pops had ripped off..

"Morons. Sweets are a fundamental right that all people should be able to enjoy. So you eat that ice cream sundae, and you enjoy it. In fact... in light of what you said, Ranma, I'll treat you to a second sundae, okay?" she asked, smiling in what she hoped was a reassuring manner as she did so.

"Okay!" Ranma chirped brightly. ' _I still don't get why it's so important to her... but I'm glad she cares. Besides, this is yummy!'_

With that, the two fiancées resumed tucking into their frozen treats. In their companionable silence, they finally registered the blaring of a TV mounted into the wall behind the serving bar, which was evidently broadcasting some kind of documentary on China.

"-the legendary Byankhala range of the Qinghai province. The peoples of this area revere China's White Rock Mountain as a local deity... "

At those words, Ranma perked up and looked over her shoulder at the television set. "Hey, I've been there!" she noted conversationally.

"Hm?" Nabiki replied, looking over. "...Wait, that's right; that's around the area where you and your father got your curses, isn't it?"

"Yeah... that was our trip took its turn for the worst alright," Ranma scowled as the distinctly unpleasant memories paraded through his mind.

On screen, the images of a strange, primitive-looking village gave way to a reporter or documentary maker, who addressed the audience, "Well, the conditions at this Amazon village are really - gah! Look at that!" he yelled suddenly, pointing off to his side in astonishment...

Which was when, with incredibly dramatic timing, an enormous impact resounded against the ice cream parlour's wall to the right of the television set. Cracks riddled the wall before a second mighty blow smashed it down, leaving a gaping hole and a cloud of dust that framed the form of a strange teenage girl - Chinese, by the look of her and especially the clothing she was wearing. Long bluish-purple hair done in an odango style framed wine-red eyes that gleamed coldly as she scanned the room, two chui clutched in her hands.

As the dust parted, her gaze locked onto Ranma, and if anything her eyes grew even colder than before.

"Ranma," the strange girl stated simply.

"What?!" Nabiki blurted out, trying to understand what had just happened.

"Sh-sh-Shampoo!" wailed Ranma, whose arms twisted into elaborate warding gestures as if he was a Buddhist priest banishing a spirit, drawing Nabiki's attention back to her aquatransexual fiancé.

"Ranma? You know her?" Nabiki asked incredulously.

At this, the Chinese girl spoke again, lifting up one of her chui. "Ranma... die," she declared, in the same flat, icy tone as before.

Ranma leapt up in her seat, one foot on the floor and one one the chair, clearly ready to bolt but seemingly unsure of which direction to do it in. "Y-yo, Shampoo, when did you..." she rambled.

The girl evidently named Shampoo simply strode forward, her uniquely shaped maces in hand. "Die," she stated flatly, jabbing out with one chui - Ranma narrowly ducked it, allowing it to punch a circular crater in the wall behind it.

"Hey! Why don'tcha just get over it an' lemme alone already?!" Ranma protested, weaving around a second thrust before grabbing a wall hanging and flinging it in her assailant's face.

Shampoo swatted the obstruction aside, but in the time that it took her to do so, Ranma surged past her with a speed that, even after all she'd witnessed, Nabiki could scarcely believe possible. By the time Shampoo's eyes were clear, Ranma had hidden herself inside of a fallen locker... and with the crazed killer from China glowering at her, Nabiki wished she'd been able to do the same.

"She went thattaway!" Nabiki hastily proclaimed, pointing out the gaping hole that Shampoo had entered by.

The Chinese girl scowled, shoulders hunching in a bodily expression of rage. "Running again? Ranma!" she screamed, whirling on one foot and bouncing back the way she came, using the fallen locker where Ranma had hidden herself as a spring to propel herself out the hole, with the rebound leaving the doors visibly dented inwards.

Nabiki darted over, watching as the crazed Chinese assassin vanished off into the distance, then grabbed the dented locker doors and heaved with all her might. Her arms burning from the strain, she pulled them open, abused hinges snapping with the force as she revealed her formerly hidden fiancée, curled up into the top of the locker above where the door had been kicked inwards. "Ranma? Are you okay?" she demanded.

"Yeah... thanks, Nabiki; that was some quick thinking," the clearly overwhelmed aquatransexual declared.

"Just what the hell was that all about?! Who was that crazy girl?!" Nabiki demanded.

"It's... a long story," Ranma mumbled, staring off into space.

' _I think he's shellshocked...'_ Nabiki mused, realizing she'd taken Ranma's confident nature a bit for granted.

"My restaurant!" the proprietor hollered, running over and grabbing Ranma by the front of her shirt. "Was that crazy girl a friend of yours? She's destroyed my place! I demand you pay for all the damages!" he snarled.

Ranma simply snarled back, batting his arms aside and grabbing his own collar, lifting the man clean off the floor in her fury. "Are your nuts?! That crazy chick ain't my friend - she just tried to kill me! I ain't paying you nothing!" she spat.

"Wh-who are you people?!" the cowed proprietor pleaded, flinching from the fury in Ranma's eyes. He was just a simple shop owner, this sort of wanton destruction was beyond his ken.

"None yer business!" Ranma spat, disdainfully tossing the man to the floor with all the grace of a sack of potatoes. "C'mon, Nabiki; let's scram," Ranma said, already heading for the door, with Nabiki hot on her fiancée's heels.

Once they were safely out of the ice cream parlor's doors, Nabiki put her hand on Ranma's shoulders. "So, who was that girl? Why was she trying to kill you?" she asked.

Ranma visibly slumped, sighing mournfully. "Like I said... it's a long story. Let's just get me back to being a guy first, okay? She's only a danger if I'm a girl," he explained.

' _That makes no sense...? Whatever; get the facts, Nabiki, can't work things out without the facts.'_ Nabiki thought to herself. "Alright, Ranma; lead the way."

' _Oh, man, I never thought Shampoo would catch up to me in Japan... what am I gonna tell Nabiki?'_ Ranma mournfully wondered.

A quick stop at a tea cart, and Ranma was back to his true gender. After that, he insisted that they head to the Tendo Dojo, and Nabiki was completely inclined to agree; that was yet another date down the toilet and Nabiki's well honed sense of intuition was telling her this was going to become a trend.

Once they were what Ranma obviously felt was a safe distance from the parlor, he sighed and began to speak.

"Alright, so, long story short; her name is Shampoo, she's from a tribe called the Joketsuzoku in China, and she wants my girl-form very, _**very**_ dead."

"I kind of saw that," Nabiki dryly observed. "But _why_?"

"It all goes back to Jusenkyo. Me and pops getting cursed? That was kind of like the start of our troubles..." Ranma sighed. "We left Jusenkyo in a hurry - I didn't know why at the time, but now, I think pops was trying to escape from Ryoga after trying to make sweet 'n' sour pork outta him. No supplies, no rest, nothing; we just ran up the road, following the Jusenkyo guide. Eventually, we come to a village called Nyuchiezu, a place where all the women are taught martial arts. Sort of a tribe of Chinese Amazons, I guess you'd say."

"That sounds... a little weird," Nabiki noted, her mind half trying to figure out how that would even work.

"Hey, we just ran into a valley of springs that curse you to change shapes with cold an' hot water. Besides, you'd be surprised at how weird the world gets once you get off the beaten path," Ranma insisted. "Anyway, we arrive to what the guide says is this big once a year fighting tournament for the women. Shampoo was fighting as we got there - well, I say 'fighting', I mean 'winning the tournament for the year'," he corrected himself.

"She's good at martial arts, then?" Nabiki asked.

"Oh, yeah. Her last opponent was this big ugly bruiser of a woman - twice my dad's height and twice his girth, built like a brick outhouse. Shampoo took her down in just one good hit," Ranma explained in a distant, albeit almost respectful, manner.

"Great... so how'd you get on the bad side of somebody like that?"

"Well, I did say pops an' me didn't grab any supplies before we left Jusenkyo, right? So, by the time we hit Nyuchiezu, we were both starving, an' there was this table laden up with food - we figured it must be part of some kind of festival surrounding the tournament, cuz you'd be surprised how often that's the case, an' we started helping ourselves..."

"I'm sensing a 'but' here," Nabiki commented with morbid amusement.

"Yeah. Turns out the feast wasn't for the bystanders... it was the first prize for the tournament champion," Ranma sheepishly confessed. "Shampoo wasn't happy when she saw us gorging ourselves on it."

"And that's why she wants to kill you?" Nabiki asked incredulously. ' _I've seen some rather petty people, but a death vendetta over food?!'_

"No... well, kinda? See, once the guide translated why she was so mad, I offered to challenge her to a fight for the prize," Ranma elaborated .

At this, Nabiki sighed, covering her eyes with one hand as she shook her head. "Oh, Ranma... why would you add fuel to the fire like that?"

"Hey, I was just thinking that if I won fair and square, then that settled any honor problems, y'know? Only... it didn't work out that way."

"She beat you?" Nabiki asked, somewhat incredulous. She knew that, abstractly, Ranma couldn't be invincible, but she'd yet to see him lose in an actual fight, either! It was kind of hard to contemplate the idea that somebody else could beat him!

"What? No, I won easily!" Ranma protested, pride clearly wounded by that suggestion. "But... no sooner was I declared the winner than she comes along and kisses me on the cheek."

"She what?!" Nabiki snapped, an uncharacteristic flare of jealousy rising like a cobra in the depths of her heart. Shampoo might be a crazy killer, but it would have taken a blind man to not see she was also very well put together, and that meant it was rather tricky for Nabiki to stamp down on the instinctive response.

Wisely, Ranma didn't answer that, instead hurrying on with his explanation. "Next thing I know, the Jusenkyo guide is freaking out. He grabs me by the wrist and drags me with him as he runs for the hills, pops hot on our heels. As we go, he explains that what I just got was something called the Kiss of Death; an oath by Shampoo that she'll kill me for defeating her, even if she has to track me to the ends of the earth!"

That snuffed out any petty feelings of jealousy in an instant, replacing it with the icy clamminess of sheer horror. "And she's serious about that?! No, of course she's serious about it - she's here in Japan and obviously still hunting for your head..."

"Yeah... she made our lives in China a misery. Chased us down everywhere we went. Even changing back into our real forms only let us give her the slip for so long," Ranma glumly concluded.

"That's a real problem... how can you make her stop?" Nabiki asked.

"Do I look like I know?" Ranma dryly shot back. "I mean, shy of killing her - and I'm not gonna do that!"

"Even though she wants to kill you?" the incredulous middle Tendo pointed out.

"Hey, two wrongs don't make a right and all that, right? Besides, pops always said that a real man doesn't hurt girls if he can avoid it, and killing a girl's pretty damn hurtful!" Ranma pointed out.

At that, Nabiki sighed, covering her eyes with her hand as she rubbed her temples with her fingers. "I feel I should be refuting your logic... and yet I cannot," she grumbled. As the gates to the Tendo complex opened before them, she asked, "So, what are we going to do about her?"

"I don't know... I figure the two of us will get together with pop and Mr. Tendo. Between the four of us, maybe we can figure out some way to wriggle out of this," Ranma sighed.

"We're home!" he called out, kicking off his shoes to enter the household proper from the (doorway). He led the way into the living room... and then let out a cry of horror, falling over in sheer shock!

Startled, Nabiki poked her head around the sliding door and gasped in horror as she saw none other than Shampoo, sitting at their table as if she belonged there, sipping from a hot cup of tea! "What the hell?!" she blurted out.

"Oh; Ranma, Nabiki, welcome home! Mr. Saotome brought home a visitor! Isn't that nice?" Kasumi chirped merrily from her position on the far side of the table.

It was about that moment that Nabiki noticed the distinct furry form of Genma the panda trying vainly to hide under the table. As did Ranma, who crawled over to his father with an understandably livid look on his face. "Have you gone crazy?! Well, have you?!" he hissed at Genma, who shook his head.

"Ranma?" Shampoo suddenly asked, bending around the table to look at Ranma.

The words ' _Oh, crap!'_ rang through two teenagers' heads simultaneously, with Ranma slowly and reluctantly looking at Shampoo, sitting up as she bent forward until they were nearly face-to-face.

"Nihao," she said, her tone cool, but not impolite.

"Um... nihao?" Ranma hesitantly replied, waiting for the shoe to drop. But, instead of whipping out a weapon and lunging for him, Shampoo instead began to poke him in the chest with one finger, then graduated to rubbing his chest around the pectorals with a confused look. "Uh... what are you doing?" he asked her.

"Is man?" Shampoo observed, sounding rather confused about that fact.

At this, Ranma and Nabiki exchanged glances, with Nabiki watching as realization visibly dawned in her fiancé's eyes. ' _This means something to him... but what? Well, I'll have to hold my tongue for the moment; he'll tell me when it's safe,'_ Nabiki mused.

"Uh, yeah, that's cuz I'm a guy," Ranma said, turning his attention back to Shampoo... who was still fondling him. ' _Why is she still rubbing me like this? And why do I feel like I would be expected to be pissed if the genders were switched?'_

Shampoo's own thoughts on the matter, incidentally? ' _Ooh, nice... feels like a strong man. Good looking, too. Maybe I can get him to fight me? He seems nice... better boyfriend material than Mousse, definitely.'_

"I'm home!" Akane's voice echoed up the hall, mere moments before she arrived on the scene. She took one look at what was happening and then turned an irked glare to her sister. "Nabiki, who is this weirdo, and why is she molesting your fiancé?"

At Akane's words, Shampoo suddenly stopped and looked up. "Nabiki?" she asked sharply, eyes fixing into slits as she glowered at the middle Tendo with obvious recognition.

This time, the "Oh crap!" was audible from both teens as Shampoo suddenly shot to her feet, whipping out a chui from seemingly thin air and brandishing it menacingly at Nabiki. "Girl-type Ranma! Where she?" the Chinese Amazon demanded in her broken Japanese.

"I don't know! I swear, I have no idea!" Nabiki protested.

At that, Shampoo drew back her chui, but her icy gaze remained fixed on the middle Tendo daughter. "You hide Ranma... you too must die!" she spat, before swinging at Nabiki.

Nabiki screamed in fright, calling on recently honed instincts and muscles to escape danger. If Shampoo had shown up a week earlier, she probably would have split Nabiki in half; as it was, Nabiki was only just good enough to leap backwards at the last moment, getting herself to safety even as her assailant's weapon carved a chunk out of the door she had been standing next to.

Unfortunately, Nabiki still didn't have Akane's level of instinctive grace and agility, so whilst she did manage to leap clean off of the patio and into the backyard, that meant the sudden drop caused her to fall flat on her rear.

"Nabiki! Okay, you; a fight with me's one thing, but you leave her alone!" Ranma snarled, leaping up from the floor and attacking his Chinese foe.

To her credit, Shampoo didn't yelp in shock at the sudden turn of events, but instead rallied in an instant, trying to ward Ranma off with deft twirls, thrusts and jabs of her twin chui, interspersed with the occasional kick. But Ranma's superior speed and strength, coupled with the advantage of surprise, meant that her resistance lasted all of a few seconds before Ranma snapped the head off of one Chinese mace with a deft kick... that the colorful spherical mass of steel spun through the air and then landed on Shampoo's head, knocking her out cold, was actually a fluke, but Ranma wasn't in the mood to protest it at the moment.

Instead, he sprang out into the garden and to Nabiki's side. "Are you okay, Nabiki?!"

Nabiki shook her head, trying to get her thoughts in order and her heart to slow down; even after her taste of combat on the ice, this martial arts thing still tended to move faster than she was used to. Registering Ranma's words, she gave him a shocked look. "How the hell did she recognize me and not you?!" she demanded, too ruffled to approach the matter with her usual calm delicacy.

"She's never actually seen me as a guy before today, but she must have seen you back at the ice cream place," Ranma explained meekly.

At his words, the memories flooded back, and Nabiki nodded absently. "Ah, yes, that makes sense... wait a minute - but you just beat her as a guy!" she blurted out.

As the realization sank in, Ranma visibly staggered, clearly gobsmacked by the weight of his actions. "Oh, no... oh, **no!** " he wailed.

"Would somebody tell me what's going on!?" Akane demanded.

And with perfect irony, that was when Shampoo slowly opened her eyes. Unspeaking, she rose to her feet, loping with eerie silence from her impromptu resting place on the floor into the garden and straight for Ranma, who waved his arms in a visible panic.

"W-wait! You didn't lose! It was an accident!" he protested, trying to back away from the advancing Chinese assassin.

"Ranma, the pond!" Nabiki cried out, seeing that Ranma was about to back right into the water.

Immediately, Ranma froze, and Shampoo promptly lunged! ...And wrapped her arms around his shoulders in a gentle hug. She stared straight into his eyes and smiled softly. "Wo ai ni," she said, her words so soft that they were more an exhalation than speech.

"'Wo ai ni'? It's you I love?" Kasumi interjected from the patio, where she had meekly stuck her head out to observe what was happening.

"...Wait, what?" Nabiki blurted.

In fact, Ranma was thinking the exact same thing. He remembered his first kiss all too well, and the icy-eyed, stony-faced Shampoo of China was a very different thing to this doe-eyed, lightly blushing and softly smiling Chinese Amazon now wrapping her arms around him. "Beats me, this ain't what happ-mph!"

Before Ranma could finish, Shampoo cut him off by suddenly latching onto his lips.

"What the?!" shrieked a bug-eyed Akane, hair standing on end as she watched Ranma, the boy she had however reluctantly started to accept as her sister's fiancé, seemingly cheating on Nabiki with the girl who had just tried to squash Nabiki like a bug!

"The Kiss of Death! A vow to kill Ranma, even if she must chase him to the ends of the earth!" Nabiki cried out, swept up in the drama of it all. A moment later, she then hesitantly added, "But... is it supposed to take this long?"

An apt question, since Shampoo was still latched onto the frozen Ranma's lips like a hungry leech and showed no sign of letting go anytime soon. Instead, she flagrantly wriggled against him, soft murmurs and sighs of delight making it sound like she was very much enjoying being right where she was.

It was anyone's guess when she might have stopped, but Ranma forced the issue as his legs suddenly gave out under him like a pair of overcooked noodles, visibly collapsing into a boneless heap so that Shampoo barely saved from falling backwards and landing headfirst on one of the boulders that marked the periphery of the koi pond. "Airen!" she cried.

"That two-timing pervert!" Akane thundered. "How dare you string my sister along like this, Ranma?!"

Nabiki simply hurried over to her fallen fiancé, getting as close as she dared to the volatile and clearly unstable Chinese Amazon. "What happened?!" she demanded.

Shampoo waved a hand in front of Ranma's eyes, and then looked up from his face to Nabiki's. "Airen faint!" she explained, sounding very confused by that turn of events.

"What, that isn't normal with the Kiss of Death?" Nabiki mockingly asked.

Shampoo simply blinked at her, looking even more confused than before. "Kiss of Death? Shampoo no give airen Kiss of Death."

"Wait, what?!" Nabiki blurted out, blinking rather rapidly. "What do you mean?!"

"What Shampoo say," the Chinese assassin replied primly, practically embodying the old phrase "Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth."

"Hold on just a second... you lost the fight with Ranma... ignoring that it technically wasn't a fight and more Ranma giving you a spanking," Nabiki amended.

Shampoo glared at Nabiki, obviously sensing an insult even with her evidently limited capacity with Japanese. "Yes...?"

"And you kissed him," Nabiki continued.

"Yes...?"

"So, you gave him the Kiss of Death," Nabiki concluded triumphantly,.

"Nope," Shampoo chirped , briskly shaking her head with a cheerful smile.

"Rrrgh!" Nabiki growled in frustration, pinching her temples in an attempt to stave off a sudden headache. ' _She's either worse with the language than she sounds, or she's an idiot... and I don't think she's an idiot.'_

"Nabiki, what is going on here?! What did that pervert do?" Akane demanded, repressing the urge to stamp a foot in emphasis.

And of course, that was when Soun suddenly burst onto the scene from elsewhere inside the house. "That's enough! What's the fuss? What's going on?" He demanded from his position at the newly opened door.

Nabiki now pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to stave off the migraine she could feel hammering at her skull, she was going to have bruises after this she could tell. "Can we all just calm down and give me a moment to think, please?!" she pleaded.

"Nabiki, who is this girl? And why is she holding your fiancé like that?" Soun brusquely asked, padding over to the patio.

In fact, Shampoo had just taken that moment to lay Ranma down on the ground, but since she had then hunkered over him and started gently batting his cheek in an effort to coax him awake, one could forgive Soun the technicalities.

Slowly inhaling and then exhaling, Nabiki looked over at her father. "This is Shampoo," she explained, pointing at the blue-haired foreigner.

"Nihao," Shampoo interjected, still not taking her eyes off of Ranma, who was finally stirring back to life. She beamed with joy as Ranma opened his eyes, though the smile wavered when he visibly flinched and tried to scuttle away from her on his elbows and feet.

"She's a Chinese Amazon assassin, and she just gave Ranma the Kiss of Death, which means she's vowed to hunt him to the ends of the earth and kill him," Nabiki elaborated.

"She's what?!" Soun barked in outrage.

"No Shampoo didn't!" the Joketsuzoku warrior indignantly protested, giving Nabiki an indignant pout.

"You didn't?" Ranma asked indignantly, although he was ignored.

"Ranma beat you, and then you kissed him unconscious. What else could it be?" Nabiki dryly asked.

Now, Shampoo frowned, clearly growing annoyed at the communication barrier. She stood up and advanced on Nabiki, who stared back defiantly at her, doing her best to make it seem like she wasn't concerned. At arm's length from the middle Tendo daughter, Shampoo thrust a hand into her cleavage and withdrew a battered old booklet. Deliberately ignoring her audience, Shampoo flipped through the pages, and then handed the open booklet to Nabiki.

Nabiki gingerly accepted the book, and then began reading the section that Shampoo tapped on with her finger, finding Japanese kanji instead of the expected Chinese characters. Silence reigned as she took in the contents, only to be shattered when the wide-eyed Nabiki suddenly blurted out, "You've got to be joking!"

"What?! What is it?" Ranma piped up, staying still in case of more trouble in a moment of rare foresight.

"Yeah, Nabiki, tell us what's going on!" Akane insisted.

Still staring at the book, Nabiki swallowed hard. "The Kiss of Death only applies when an Amazon loses to an outsider woman. But there's another law for when an Amazon loses to an outsider man..." she trailed off, clearly finding it hard to believe her own eyes.

"What? What is it?" Ranma demanded as he pulled himself up.

"According to this book... if an Amazon is defeated by a non-Amazon man... then she has to marry him!" Nabiki revealed with a justified dramatic flourish.

A chorus of "WHAT?!" poured from the throats of Ranma, Soun and Akane; Kasumi simply covered her mouth, letting out a shocked, "Oh, my!", whilst Genma went and hid himself somewhere in the house, hoping to escape attention. Shampoo simply smiled proudly and hugged Ranma whilst he was distracted.

"You must be joking, daughter!" Soun blustered, looking at his middle daughter like she was giving a bad show.

"Would I joke about a thing like this?" Nabiki dryly quipped back.

"Besides, read it for yourself - it's right here in Japanese," she said, passing the book over to Soun.

He held it up to his face, then nodded sagely. "Well, I'll be... it **is** right here in Japanese," he marveled.

Then he blinked, before his eyes grew wide with outrage. "What am I saying?!" he protested. "Ranma! How dare you two-time my sweet little girl like this!" he bellowed, whirling on Ranma with a thunderous expression of rage.

"Hey, I had no idea of this! I'm innocent!" Ranma protested, waving an upraised palm at arm's length in an instinctive effort to ward off the angry patriarch.

"You leave Airen alone!" Shampoo snapped, standing angrily in front of Ranma like a human shield, hands on hips as she glared at the bombastic Tendo elder.

Suddenly, the sunlight seemed to dim, even as as a monstrous, ukiyo-e version of Soun's head loomed over the Chinese Amazon. "You stay out of this, you little homewrecker! Ranma is going to marry my daughter!" he roared in a voice like a demon's, an elongated tongue lashing out like a whip from beneath a wild mustache and bulging eyes.

"Daddy, watch out!" Nabiki cried, but it was too late. Her father's Demon Head technique had succeeded in scaring countless souls who had dared to oppose or enrage the Tendo patriarch, but Shampoo was different to the various bullies and jerks whom he had targeted in the past.

In Soun's defense, Shampoo's eyes also bulged out as she shrieked in fear... but unlike Genma had done when Soun used the move on him, she chose fight over flight, lashing out with an instinctive punch that sent him flying to land in an unconscious heap on the ground.

"Daddy!" Akane cried, racing to her father's side. "How dare you do that to him, you jerk!" she spat at Shampoo.

"You want some too?" the Chinese Amazon sneered back, the effect undermined by the fact she was visibly fighting to steady her legs and banish an army of goosebumps. She evidently hadn't been completely immune to the technique.

Nabiki pinched the bridge of her nose yet again. "Ranma...?" she asked in a quiet, long-suffering tone. "Would you kindly take Shampoo around the back and keep her out of mischief? I'll sort things out here," she asked.

"Sure thing, Nabiki. C'mon, Shampoo," he said, figuring he would catch more flies with honey and wanting to try and de-escalate things a little. It paid off as his former assassin turned self-proclaimed fiancée simply smiled and nodded, following Ranma off to the other yard... although he could have done without her latching onto his arm like a lifeline...

Akane watched them go with a sour look on her face. "Perverted jerk... Nabiki, what is going on?" she demanded.

"Later, Akane. Help me get daddy inside. I'll explain it to all of you when he wakes up," Nabiki declared.

* * *

Soon afterwards...

* * *

Whilst it might have been a while since Soun Tendo's life-and-death combat days, the Tendo patriarch was still surprisingly adept at taking a punch. So, he woke up in surprisingly short order. Wearing an icepack that Kasumi had provided for the bruise, he smoked ferociously on a cigarette to try and calm his nerves.

"Alright, daughter," he declared, and the brusqueness of his tone showed how strained his mood was. "Would you mind explaining why your fiancé is fooling around with some other woman? And you don't seem to mind?"

Akane nodded her agreement, whilst Nabiki sighed.

"Alright, it's a long story, but let me try and sum it up. Her name is Shampoo, and she's from a tribe of Chinese Amazons that Ranma and Mr. Saotome stumbled across shortly after Jusenkyo. Ranma beat her in a challenge match, and because he was a girl at the time, she gave him the Kiss of Death. She's been hunting him ever since, and today, she found him - or, rather 'her' - whilst we were on a date at the ice cream parlor. Ranma got away from her there, but by the time we got home, she'd somehow beaten us here - I don't know how, but apparently it's Mr. Saotome's fault," Nabiki detailed in her usual clinical tone, hiding her own anxiety in her familiar cold manner.

"I'm so sorry, Nabiki, I didn't know any of this," Kasumi apologized from her seat by the temple, looking downcast.

"Don't be sad, sis; it's not like Mr. Saotome told you what was going on. So I'm going to blame all of this on him," Nabiki declared.

"Shampoo didn't exactly look out for blood when she was kissing Ranma unconscious," Akane wryly pointed out.

"That's because she's never seen Ranma as a guy before. She has no idea the two of them are the same person. She attacked me because she remembered seeing me with 'girl-type' Ranma, and then Ranma tried to protect me," Nabiki laid out, pushing down the handful of stomach butterflies that stirred their ticklish wings at the memory of Ranma leaping to her protection. "Next thing we know, she's declared him to be her chosen husband," she finished, shrugging.

"I must admit, I find this hard to believe," Soun grumbled, wincing as he pressed the icepack on the bruise too hard.

"Harder than a son-in-law who turns into a girl when splashed with cold water?" Nabiki asked flippantly.

"I... see your point," Soun sheepishly admitted.

"You can't be taking this nonsense seriously, Nabiki!" Akane protested.

"You read the same book that I read. It's right there in black and white, and I haven't seen any evidence to the contrary... admittedly, I don't like the way the rest of the book is in Chinese, so we can't get a greater context," Nabiki grumbled.

"I still don't like it," Akane muttered with a black expression.

"Well, until I think of a way to get rid of her, we're stuck with her hanging around... speaking of which, anyone know where she went?" Nabiki asked nervously, not wanting to let the dangerous Chinese warrior go unsupervised at all, let along for long.

"Oh, Ranma took her out to the back garden. Maybe they're still there?" Kasumi suggested gently.

"Thanks, sis," Nabiki replied, getting up from the table and casually dropping the Book of Joketsuzoku Law on it before heading outside.

The sun was setting by this point, painting the sky into a beautiful tapestry of oranges, golds and pinks, but Nabiki didn't really notice. Her attention was focused on finding any sense of her fiancé, or in a pinch the Chinese assassin who had barreled into their lives like a runaway wrecking ball. Her pursuit was quickly rewarded, the sounds of Ranma's voice drawing her to the birdfeeder in the back garden.

"Okay, Shampoo, let me put this a different way..." Ranma said, holding up a finger in a teacher-like manner that was quite at odds with the way he was squatting atop the birdfeeder to give himself an added bit of height over Shampoo. "That Amazon junk might work when you're in China, but you're in Japan now, understand? You gotta forget about that 'kill the girls, marry the guys' stuff here... do you understand, Shampoo?"

The object of his lecture, who had been staring up at him raptly, simply smiled, nodded, and then hopped up onto the birdfeeder with him, nuzzling up close.

"Ah, man, you ain't listening to a word I say!" Ranma complained as he tried to wriggle free without hurting her.

Nabiki felt torn by the sight in front of her. Abstractly, she knew she should be jealous of the way Shampoo was acting, but at the same time, intellectually, she knew the Chinese Amazon wasn't a threat - even beyond the fact Ranma had never evidenced the kind of wandering eye or loins-first thinking of other boys at Furinkan, the simple fact that Shampoo had tried to kill him not hours ago rationally precluded any real attraction to her.

With those factors cancelling each other out, she was actually left kind of amused by the sight of Ranma trying to smooth-talk somebody who so clearly wasn't going to buy it... Ranma might have been a great martial artist, but she was definitely the silver-tongued one in their little relationship.

Add to it that Nabiki didn't really want to pick a fight with a girl who punched through walls and was ready to kill anyone who got on her bad side, and the result was that she felt no shame in sitting back and enjoying the show. It was kind of petty, she knew, but it was also a cathartic to see that Ranma wasn't the best at everything.

Shampoo suddenly placed a hand on each of Ranma's cheeks, staring tenderly into his eyes. "Woda, airen," she crooned.

Nabiki blinked. "What's that mean?" she wondered, cursing that she hadn't taken that Chinese course in the previous grade.

"It means something like, 'My Beloved Husband', Nabiki," came Kasumi's gentle voice from behind her.

Nabiki nearly leapt out of her skin. "Where!? How?!" she hissed, narrowly keeping from shouting as she turned around and found herself confronted by her sisters; Kasumi holding a simple Chinese-to-Japanese phrase translation book, and Akane glowering.

"Honestly! Why aren't you stopping him, Nabiki?" Akane growled.

"Stop him from what? Try to talk some sense into Shampoo?" Nabiki dryly shot back, forcing her racing heart under control.

With perfect timing to emphasize Nabiki's point, Ranma aggressively pulled away from Shampoo's hands and firmly declared, "Stop it, Shampoo! I know you don't wanna hear this, but listen!"

Unfortunately for Ranma, he made the mistake of continuing to stare into Shampoo's eyes, wide and doe-like with adoration, a beatific smile on her face as she stared back at him. He liked Nabiki - he liked her a lot! He couldn't yet say that he loved her, but then, that was more because Ranma was kind of slow to open up his heart to anyone. But Shampoo... Ranma would have had to have been a eunuch to not notice how attractive she was, and Ranma Saotome was no eunuch.

In fact, he'd actually felt the seeds of a crush plant themselves back in that fateful day in China, when he'd first seen the gorgeous Chinese Amazon on the challenge log, and the way she was looking at him now was bringing back memories of the way he'd first felt when she'd kissed him on the cheek... before they'd been crushed under the realization of what that kiss actually meant.

The result? Ranma's cursed tongue chose that moment to start tripping over itself. In truth, aside from Nabiki, Ranma had never actually been that good at talking to girls. In fact, Nabiki would have stated that Ranma actually wasn't that good at talking to her, either, which was why he was so much fun to tease. So, he found himself starting to babble like an idiot, despite his best intentions.

"Y-you... you and I... we..." he rambled, unable to find the words he wanted when she just kept staring at him like that. ' _Why does she have to be so damn good at acting cute? She tried to kill me!'_

"Looks like he forgot what he was going to say," Akane drawled, smirking at her sister.

"Yeah, Ranma seems to have a problem with keeping his lines straight when girls turn up the cute charm. Kodachi screwed him up the same way," Nabiki nonchalantly replied. "Doesn't mean anything beyond the fact that he can't handle talking to women."

"M-marry you? I mean, I can't! I got somebody!" Ranma blurted out wildly, oblivious to the Greek Chorus watching him make a fool of himself.

Shampoo simply thrust herself between Ranma's arms in a hug, eyes closed as she cheerfully announced, "Wo ai ni!"

"That means, 'I love you', Nabiki," a nervous Kasumi pointed out helpfully.

"She's obviously desperate for a date, and I suppose I can't fault her for having good taste," Nabiki lightly replied. ' _Well, alright, I really wish she'd stop snuggling up with_ _ **my**_ _Ranma... but, at the same time, this is hilarious; even Kodachi didn't freak Ranma out so much! Whoops!'_ she winced as Ranma promptly fell off the birdfeeder and landed flat on his back, legs still up in the air. ' _That looked like it hurt...'_

If it had hurt, however, it wasn't enough to jar Ranma's tongue off the track his unhinged mind was scribing. "S-so... we, uh, well, that's why we should, y'know, get ta know each other first and junk...y-yeah, that's what..."

By this point, Soun and Genma, the latter still in panda form, had arrived on the scene, and were staring mournfully at the upside-down and rambling aquatransexual. "Stop and listen to yourself, son; it's sad," Soun sighed, whilst Genma held up a sign with the kanji for **Pathetic** scrawled on it.

"Airen," Shampoo simply said, staring at the fallen martial artist with concern.

"Aren't you going to go out and tell her off?" Akane asked.

"In case you've forgotten, Akane, she's a martial artist who even Ranma wants to tread lightly around, and I'm very much not a martial artist, recent crash course aside," Nabiki scolded her. "No; the safest place for me is under her radar..."

* * *

That night...

* * *

The full moon hung low and full over the night sky as Ranma sat on the Tendo roof, chin in hand, elbow and knee, and misery radiating from him. ' _This is just great... I think I was better off when Shampoo just wanted to kill me! Crazy thing is, I'd almost think she was sincere about this whole engagement nonsense... oh, man, Nabiki must be so upset by all this. I gotta talk to her...'_

Determined to try and make amends for this latest burst of chaos in their lives, Ranma casually dropped the two stories from the roof to the ground and went in search of his official fiancée. Landing in the garden, he wandered around to the pond, where he spotted Akane doing some exercises.

"Hey, Akane? Where's Nabiki?" he asked as he approached her.

At his words, the youngest Tendo turned to face him, scowling hatefully at him. "Why? You want to go and stomp on her heart some more?" she spat.

"What're you talking about?!" Ranma replied, staring incredulously at Akane.

"I can't believe you! Two-timing my sister, and then convincing her to lie about it to protect your own skin! You make me sick!" Akane hissed.

Ranma recoiled at the venom in her words, his own metaphorical hackles bristling at the implications. "Two-timing her nothing! This whole mess is all because of Shampoo and those stupid tribal laws!"

"A likely story!" Akane scoffed. "What, I'm supposed to believe that there are actually such things as the Kiss of Death? Puh-lease!" she mockingly declared. "And even if it is real...you should take it like a man and put Shampoo in her place, not just stand there and let her kiss you in front of my sister!"

Quicker than Ranma had expected, Akane grabbed a bucket, scooped up some water from the koi pond, and flung it at him, drenching him from head to toe and triggering his gender-bending curse. The newly-made redheaded girl gagged, waving her hands and spitting pond-water that she'd unwittingly caught in her mouth, before she fixed her own baleful glare on Akane. "Whaddya do that for?!"

"For being a two-timing perverted jerk, that's what! Kiss of Death... I bet it doesn't even exist!" Akane sneered.

And, with perfect timing, that was when a chui flew between the two girls, splitting one of the largest boulders ringing the koi pond in half even as both Ranma and Akane instinctively screamed in fear. In a further feat of unrehearsed synchronization, their heads turned to see the source of their attack...

"Girl-type Ranma!" Shampoo cried, brandishing a massive dao sword for emphasis, the wicked blade gleaming in the moonlight. "I kill!"

Ranma screamed again as Shampoo came rocketing towards her, and immediately ran for her life...that she happened to bump into Akane in the process, sending the youngest Tendo plunging into the pond, was a complete accident. Really. It wasn't like she pushed her deliberately as she ran past her or nothing like that. Running to the compound walls that divided the Tendo estate from the streets beyond, she hopped onto them and began racing along the top, with Shampoo hot on her heels and now dual-wielding dao and chui.

"Ranma!" Shampoo cried, brandishing her weapons with wicked intent.

"W-wait a minute!" Ranma pleaded, only to have to spring forward to evade a vertical swipe from the Chinese Amazon's mace that smashed a deep crater into the wall.

From the living room, Soun and Genma watched the proceedings, the former dumbfounded. "When he's a boy, she just wants him... but as a girl, she wants him dead. Just like Nabiki said," he marveled... which turned to a fear-fueled scrabble for safety as Ranma led Shampoo right into the living room as part of her desperate attempt to escape.

They bounded back and forth around the room, the dining table being cloven in half by a stray swing of Shampoo's sword, and then they were off as Ranma smashed through the traditional shoji walls in her flight to escape.

Kasumi, who had been sitting at the table, stared in mild shock at the carnage, trying and failing to put on a smile. "Well... they certainly do need to get to know each other better, don't they?" she observed, a statement that drew a nod from the still-pandafied Genma.

"Stay! Stay away! Stay away from me, I said!" Ranma wailed, over the cacophony of walls being smashed and broken.

Whilst all of this had been going on, Nabiki had been in her room, trying to get ahead of the backlog of homework from the Golden Pair and their stupid interference in her life. Of course, when she'd heard the screaming, and the crashing, she'd known something was up. Normally, she would have remained where she was, hoping to stay safe, but she'd heard Ranma's voice in that chaos, and so she jogged down the steps to the dining room, staring in shock at the destruction she saw there. "What happened?! Where's Ranma?!" she demanded

"Oh, Nabiki! Ranma turned into a girl, and then Shampoo saw her and... well... they did this," Kasumi said, gesturing helplessly at the room.

Nabiki stared incredulously at her elder sister. "How in the world did he get splashed with cold water? He knew something like this would happen!" she asked, dumbfounded.

Akane blushed and steadfastly avoided looking at Nabiki. Unfortunately, Nabiki heard the water dripping onto the patio as Akane wrung out her gi, and the youngest Tendo shivered as she felt Nabiki's gaze biting into her back.

" _Akane..."_ Nabiki growled, in the icy tones that her family knew signified when she was well and truly pissed.

Outside, Ranma leapt onto the dojo roof, but that proved no impediment to her assailant, who simply followed her right up there. Narrowly dodging a tiles-shattering chui jab, Ranma ran for the other end of the dojo before leaping back to the wall around the estate, and from there to a neighboring roof, all the while with Shampoo hot on her heels.

"Somebody help me! Help me, please!" Ranma begged - normally an unthinkable act for her, but nobody would have said she was unjustified.

"Ranma! I kill!" Shampoo spat, in between gasping for breath as she followed her victim in leaping from roof to roof.

"Go away! Help!"

Back inside the Tendo house, Nabiki turned an icy glare on Genma. "Well? Why aren't you helping him?! He's your son!" she snapped.

'Penma' simply held up a sign. **The boy must fight his own battles.**

"...That is the laziest, most pathetic excuse I've ever heard," Nabiki scornfully observed. She glanced out into the distance, feeling a rare pang of guilt at her inability to help her fiancée... but, realistically, what could she do? She couldn't even hope to catch up to the two of them, never mind actually interfere if she did. Reluctantly, she turned and headed for her room, pausing only to spit a bitter observation over her shoulder at Genma.

"You do realize; the engagement is off if Ranma dies, right?"

Rather than wait and see if her words had any effect, Nabiki left the dining room and began climbing the stairs to her room. ' _Please, come home safe, Ranma...'_

* * *

The next morning...

* * *

When Nabiki woke up to the sound of her alarm clock instead of the by-now expected sounds of the Saotomes sparring, she wondered if yesterday had all been a dream. Unfortunately, once she made her way down to the dining room and saw the smashed walls and splintered table (both halves now being supported with an impromptu brace made of books), that idle hope was squashed. "Morning, daddy, sis, Akane," said, looking at her three family members. "Did Ranma come home last night?" she asked. ' _That Shampoo was really out for blood...'_

"Oh, good morning, Nabiki! Yes, Ranma came home very late last night... poor boy was exhausted; he's still asleep. Would you go and wake him up?" Kasumi asked.

"Thanks, Kasumi," Nabiki said, smiling in relief. ' _He's okay! I know he's escaped her all the time until now, but that was too close!'_

Back up the stairs she went, sliding open the door to the guest bedroom. "Ranma? It's time to get - up!?" Her voice unconsciously rose and her eyes went wide as she took in the sight before her.

Now, the sight of Ranma and Genma, the latter still in his panda form, laying sprawled on their backs in their futons was normal enough. But Nabiki's attention was rather focused on the third body in the bedding. At some point in the night, Shampoo had snuck not only into Ranma's room, but right into Ranma's futon; she was laying there under the covers and partially atop Ranma, her right arm draped across Ranma's chest and a faint smile visible on her lips. As Nabiki watched, she rolled over further atop of Ranma, with a gentle sigh of "Oh, airen," as she moved.

' _...Wow. And people call me shameless. Blue-haired vixen isn't joking around. I'd laugh if she were chasing any boy other than_ _ **mine**_ _...'_

Walking over to the futon as quietly as she could, Nabiki knelt down and began to poke Ranma's cheek. "Ranma? Ranma, wake up," she whispered.

Ranma didn't even bat an eyelash, but considering the way Genma was snoring, Nabiki couldn't really blame him for that. Of course, she couldn't just let him sleep, either. After a moment's thought, she reached out and pinched Ranma's nose as hard as she could. That got her a response, as Ranma's eyes finally fluttered open.

"Mmgh... Nabiki? Wha's going..." he began, speech slurred in his slumber, until his dream-fogged eyes fell upon his bedmate. At once, his eyes sprang open and he shot up, pulling away from the still-slumbering Shampoo as a thin, high-pitched whine teased Nabiki's ear.

' _Wow, I didn't know you could literally swallow a scream...'_ she wondered.

"I didn't! Nabiki! I swear! It's not! This isn't!" Ranma hissed frantically, pupils shrinking to pinpricks in his panic.

Nabiki promptly cut him off by pressing the tip of her index finger against his lips. "Ranma... do you think I'm stupid?" she sighed. She watched as guilt visibly shoved some of the panic aside in his eyes and he shook his head in desperate denial. "Then why do you think I would blame you for this? Shampoo literally was out for your blood when I saw you last night - would I really expect you to have let her into your bed? Honestly?"

Ranma simply shrugged helplessly.

"Okay, I will admit, I'm not exactly thrilled by the way she's hanging on you, but I'd rather that then watch her chop your head off," Nabiki explained, to Ranma's obvious relief.

Unfortunately, any further heartwarming conversation was cut off by Shampoo suddenly stirring; she yawned, stretched, opened her eyes and then sat up, still smiling as she reached out and placed a tender hand on each of Ranma's cheeks. "Woda airen," she crooned, leaning forward in an obvious attempt to score herself a morning kiss.

Nabiki could literally see the shiver run up Ranma's spine at that, before she blinked and Ranma had somehow gone from being in his futon to hiding behind her.

"Cut that out, Shampoo!" Ranma protested.

' _Wow, not a lot of guys would say that...'_ Nabiki noted, the sweet warmth of pride filling her at the display of Ranma's loyalty.

"Airen!" Shampoo protested, pouting indignantly.

"Hey, hold on, the pair of you!" Nabiki interjected. "It's time for breakfast! So come down and eat, okay?" She could literally feel Ranma's confusion mixing with his gratitude. Shampoo still looked dismayed at not getting her kiss, but to Nabiki's relief she nodded, obviously content to eat peacefully if given the chance.

Still, hesitant to risk the clearly volatile temperament of the Chinese Amazon, Nabiki promptly turned and headed back to the dining room, with Ranma hot on her heels and Shampoo padding along behind. Genma, they left snoring to himself, since none of them really thought about - or cared about - waking him up.

Nabiki could feel the tension mount as the three of them entered the dining room, and Ranma's fidgeting made it obvious he felt it too. Shampoo, by comparison, clearly didn't give two yen for what anyone else thought, and pointedly sat down next to Ranma, even as Soun glowered sullenly at her from his own position. Kasumi, dutiful hostess as ever, simply dished up a serve of food for Shampoo, who began politely eating with obvious enjoyment. Sadly, the tentative truce didn't last for long; after about five minutes, Shampoo began trying to coax Ranma into accepting food from her own chopsticks, with Ranma politely trying to hold her at bay. This was the final straw for Soun, who slapped the tabletop and glowered at Shampoo.

"Enough! Young lady, this farce has gone on long enough!" he thundered.

"What farce? Shampoo make nice with husband. What old man want?" the Chinese Amazon retorted.

"He is not your husband! Ranma already has a fiancée! He's going to marry my daughter Nabiki!" Soun bellowed, pointing a triumphant finger at his middle child.

' _Daddy, you idiot! Don't put me in the crosshairs!'_ the wide-eyed Nabiki mentally wailed.

"Airen marry who?" Shampoo replied, frowning darkly at the suggestion. She then turned her baleful gaze on Nabiki, who did her best to give her a cool, calm stare right back. "You? You claim Shampoo's airen for self?"

"Yes, she does! Her engagement predates yours - it is a matter of honor, forged between Ranma's father and myself before either of them were born!" Soun boasted proudly.

"Shampoo see... in that case... Shampoo challenge you, Nabiki!" the Chinese girl declared, thrusting her chopsticks at Nabiki in obvious provocation.

"To what? An eating contest?" Nabiki dryly quipped back, hoping to break the tension.

"Joketsuzoku law is clear; obstacles is for killing! You want marry Ranma, you fight Shampoo!" the lavender-haired girl declared.

"...Yeah, no," Nabiki flatly.

"What?!" an indignant Shampoo blurted.

"I'm neither a martial artist, nor an idiot. You'd slaughter me in a duel. Pass," Nabiki proclaimed.

"You... no can fight?" Shampoo asked suspiciously. When Nabiki shook her head, she smirked. "Hah! You not even obstacle! Shampoo no have to worry about weaklings like you... Ranma belong Shampoo now. We be too-too happy together. Smart girl stay out of way, and Shampoo leave alone," she bragged.

And that was the last straw for Nabiki. "Sure, I can do that... you're no obstacle to me, either," she purred darkly.

"What you say?" Shampoo asked slowly, glowering with menace.

"Well, you may be hot, lady, but Ranma's no idiot - he's never going to go for a girl who spends half her time trying to kill him and the other trying to kiss him," Nabiki jeered, now fully swept up in the breaking dam of her emotions, all the resentment and frustration and fear and spite built up since Shampoo had thrust herself into their lives the previous day finally breaking through her icy shell.

"What you talking, crazy girl?!" Shampoo demanded, by now looming over Nabiki, who scrambled to her feet in turn.

"Nabiki?!" Ranma blurted out, trying to find the words to stop this impending madness.

"Kasumi? Go and get some hot and cold water. It's time we showed Shampoo the truth, and did what Mr. Saotome should have done back in China!" Nabiki spat, never once taking her eyes from their deadlock with Shampoo's. She began to head towards the garden, with Shampoo following like an iron filing being led by a magnet.

Reluctantly, Ranma scrambled to join the two girls. ' _Oh, man, I hope Nabiki knows what she's doing...'_

Once they were on the grass, Shampoo spoke up again. "What crazy girl stupid talking?! What this?"

"Shampoo... who is Ranma?" Nabiki replied simply.

Now Shampoo finally blinked, confusion edging aside aggravation. "Which one?" she asked warily.

"Both of them," Nabiki explained.

"Girl-type Ranma is enemy. Humiliate Shampoo. Ruin most special day of Shampoo's life, stain honor, ruin name! Shampoo give her Kiss of Death - never can go home unless girl-Ranma dead!" the Chinese Amazon spat, eyes gleaming with the passion of her emotions.

Ranma winced, both at the reminder of his ongoing death-sentence and Shampoo's perspective of their little duel back in China. ' _I just wanted to try and make amends for what me 'n' pop did... great job, Ranma...'_

"And the male Ranma?" Nabiki asked conversationally.

Here, Shampoo's frown faded like a dewdrop in the sun, replaced with a beaming smile. "Airen! Shampoo husband, now. Shampoo not looking for one when come to Japan, but not complaining!"

"Why not? You're being forced to marry him, after all," Nabiki pointed out.

At that, Shampoo stared, and then laughed. "So what? Shampoo love Ranma! Airen strong warrior, and handsome, too. Shampoo get good feeling from him," the Chinese Amazon explained.

"Martial arts and looks? Are those all you care about?" Nabiki asked.

"No. They important, but not whole story. Shampoo love Airen because he have strong heart, good heart! He sweet boy; want protect others, gentle, kind... he good husband, Shampoo know it," she said, beaming proudly.

Now it was Ranma and Nabiki's turn to stare, both feeling a little awkward at this. ' _...Well, I can't say she lacks good taste..._ ' Nabiki admitted to herself. Giving herself a metaphorical pinch, she pressed on. "Okay... what do you know of Jusenkyo?" she asked.

This time, Shampoo did something that neither of them expected. She blanched. "Um... not much," she confessed. "Is evil place. Dark magic there. No Joketsuzoku ever go there. Is place of punishment for bad people. It... change people, somehow? Shampoo not remember more than that," she concluded.

"Huh... well, you know the basics, it seems," Nabiki conceded. With perfect timing, Kasumi and Akane arrived, each bearing either a pair of buckets or a pair of steaming kettles. "Jusenkyo is full of cursed springs. If you fall into one, you are cursed to change into whatever drowned in that spring when splashed with cold water. Hot water changes you back to normal, but only until you ge splashed again," Nabiki explained.

"Uh-huh... what this have to do with Shampoo and Ranma?" her counterpart demanded.

Now, Nabiki smirked darkly. "You can't guess...? Ranma! Before you came to Nyuchiezu, where had you been?" she asked crisply.

"I went to Jusenkyo," Ranma replied, a little uncertainly.

"And did you fall in a spring there?" she continued, not even looking at him, but staring at Shampoo across the garden. 'Let's see how you handle this...'

"Yeah, I did," Ranma quietly admitted.

"Airen!?" Shampoo hissed. 'What's the point of all this? Where is this 'Nabiki' going? Wait... no...no, it can't be?!'

"And the spring you fell into? What was it?" Nabiki asked, in a tone as sweet as poisoned honey.

"...It was the Spring of Drowned Girl," Ranma confessed.

The words hit Shampoo like a knife in the heart; the Chinese Amazon visibly reeled at Ranma's confession, clutching her hands together. "No! Is not possible! You lying!"

"Afraid not, China girl. There is no 'girl-type' or 'boy-type' Ranma. There's just one Ranma. Now he's a boy..." she clicked her fingers, and Akane gleefully splashed Ranma with a bucket of cold water.

"Wagh! Cold!" Ranma squealed, shaking like a dog to try and get rid of the excess water.

"And now he's a girl," Nabiki continued unabated. "Boy," she clicked her fingers, and Kasumi gently poured some hot water on Ranma's head, who sighed in relief at being returned to his true form. "And girl," another finger-snap, and Akane splashed Ranma with the second bucket, the disgruntled aquatransexual spitting out a stray mouthful in resignation. "Do you get it now, Shampoo? The girl you were trying to murder just last night is the same person as the boy you claim you want to marry!" Nabiki crowed, making a dramatic flourish at her fiancée.

"Aiyah!" Shampoo wailed, looking truly crestfallen. In the blink of an eye, she had hurtled across the intervening space, Ranma leaping back with a shocked yell as Shampoo seemingly materialized in front of her, unshed tears starting to glisten in her eyes. "Ranma?! Is true?! Boy and girl - you both Ranma?"

"Uh-yeah, yeah, it's true," Ranma replied unthinkingly. Any possible concerns for the consequences were wiped from her forebrain by the sight of a pretty girl in tears - a weakness that she had no idea how to begin training against.

At that, Shampoo did something neither he nor Nabiki ever would have expected; she burst into tears and then latched onto Ranma as if the redheaded girl-boy was a lifeline. "Shampoo sorry! Too-too sorry! Shampoo not know! Never would have done if Shampoo know! Swear it!" she wailed, burying her face into Ranma's bosom.

Ranma cast a desperate look at Nabiki, silently pleading for help, but her fiancée was of no help... in fact, she was snickering at the sight. ' _Gee, thanks, Nabiki, leave me to do the hardest part...'_ Ranma mentally grizzled to herself. "Um... it's okay, Shampoo. I'm still alive, ain't I? Just... cut off the trying ta kill me stuff and everything's okay, alright?" she said.

Now it was Nabiki's turn to direct an incredulous stare at Ranma. ' _Wait, what?! She nearly made mincemeat out of you all that time, and you're just going to let it go?!'_

Shampoo sniffled loudly, and then cast a teary-eyed yet hopeful look up at Ranma. "...Really? Ranma forgive Shampoo?"

"Yeah, I will," Ranma replied.

She sniffed again, and then beamed with joy. "So happy! Shampoo promise - no more kill girl-Ranma! Kiss of Death not valid anyway..." she admitted, but only after she'd squeezed Ranma in the tightest embrace that the Japanese aquatransexual had ever felt.

"Great! So, this means you're going to give up on him for my little girl, too?" Soun interjected from his position on the sidelines.

Nabiki felt a flutter of hope, but it swiftly died when Shampoo lifted her face from Ranma's shirt, looked Soun right in the eye, and flatly replied, "Nope."

"Why not!?" Soun demanded.

"Kiss of Marriage still valid. But... Shampoo must do thing now," the Chinese Amazon declared, releasing Ranma and turning back to Nabiki.

"What must you do?" Nabiki asked, fighting down the urge to take a step backwards.

"Nabiki do too-too good thing for Shampoo. Stop Shampoo from make too-too bad mistake. Shampoo owe Nabiki much honor. Have special thanks for Nabiki..."

At that, Nabiki allowed herself to relax. As weird as these Joketsuzoku laws had been so far, she didn't think the Chinese Amazon had it in her to try something nasty and sneaky. Shampoo marched over to her, placed a hand on either of Nabiki's shoulders, and began to chant in her native tongue. It had the feel of something solemn and sacred, but because Nabiki couldn't speak a word of the language, it meant nothing to her. She glanced over at Ranma, but the redhead's quick shake revealed that she had no idea what Shampoo was saying either.

The next part, however, rather transcended language barriers the world over. Shampoo stopped speaking, and the next thing she knew, the Chinese's Amazon's face was filling her vision as she suddenly kissed Nabiki right on the lips!

There might have been some reaction from the onlookers, but Nabiki was a bit too preoccupied to pay much attention. She tried to push Shampoo away, but it was like trying to shove aside a truck. Shampoo's lips were hot as coals against her own, a strange floral fragrance completely foreign to Nabiki's palate filling her nose, and she was helpless to resist being smothered with Joketsuzoku passion.

' _...I am so, so sorry if I got jealous at you for being floored by Shampoo's kiss, Ranma...'_

And then, as suddenly as it had happened, it was over, Shampoo stepping back from the panting, flushed Nabiki with a smile on her face. "All done!" she chirped.

"What did you do to my sister, you pervert?!" Akane roared, charging right at Shampoo. The blue-haired Chinese girl dodged Akane with such ease that the youngest Tendo might as well have been moving in slow motion. For added measure, Shampoo tripped her, causing Akane to tumble into the koi pond.

"Who you calling 'pervert girl'?" Shampoo indignantly asked.

"Explain yourself! What were you doing with my daughter?!" Soun roared.

"Solving big problem," Shampoo replied chipperly.

"What problem?!"

"Your law say Nabiki marry Ranma. Joketsuzoku law say Shampoo marry Ranma, and kill Nabiki if she get in way," Shampoo explained, slowly and patiently, as if she were talking to an idiot. "Shampoo not want kill Nabiki. So, Shampoo use law - old law, special law. Now Nabiki Shampoo's sister-wife," she explained.

"And what's that supposed to mean?" Soun asked suspiciously.

Shampoo beamed proudly. "It mean Shampoo and Nabiki both marry Ranma!" she chirped.

Silence fell... and then, moments later, Genma was finally jolted back to the land of the living in his second-story guest-room futon by an enormous, incredulous chorus of "WHAT?!"

* * *

 **Chapter End & Closing Notes**

* * *

Now, I can foresee this being a big thing in the reviews to come, so let me just try to explain things here. Is Ranma going to end up wedding Nabiki AND Shampoo (and Ukyo too, you're doubtlessly wondering, from the Characters tags on this story)? Not necessarily. But that doesn't mean that Shampoo's not going to use an obscure Joketsuzoku matrimonial bylaw to make Ranma's life complicated by trying.

See, a good romance story needs a bit of drama in it. If everything is smooth and hunky-dory, whilst it can make for a nice little feel-good read, it can't go on for very long, and it quickly becomes boring if it tries. In canon, Ranma & Akane's main source of romantic drama is the way their mutual personalities clash against each other, as each grates on the other's most sensitive emotional contact points - this keeps them from just spitting it out and admitting they love each other, but unfortunately it also makes them look like a really bad couple in the first place. But here, we don't have that element - Ranma and Nabiki can communicate much better than Ranma & Akane could, so they're not constantly 1-step-forward-2-step-backing due to interacting with each other.

But, we also have the weirdness that Ranma inadvertently brings to the relationship. Regardless of whom he's affianced to, and how they feel about each other, Shampoo and Ukyo are going to arrive anyway, and they're going to want to stake their claim on his heart. You could make an argument for Ukyo deciding against it, since initially she was out to beat Ranma up for revenge, but it's pretty clear she was still nursing a crush on him all along, so once he revealed his innocence in the theft and made it clear he didn't hate her, she'd still switch tack again. And that's going to add drama... but, at the same time, not necessarily the same drama, because we have different characters involved in the love dodecahedron.

So, Shampoo whips out the obscure bylaw and decides to sort out the "conflict" between herself and Nabiki with, in essence, "we'll both marry Ranma!" I hope folks realize that doesn't mean Nabiki or Ranma will accept her proposal!

But why is this happening, you ask? Well, for one thing, the idea that the Joketsuzoku would support polygyny is not really hard to swallow - they already mandate that their women marry men who can beat them in battle, so they're clearly breeding for "strong blood". And in that case, marrying multiple women to the same man is sensible - one man can impregnate multiple women simultaneously.

For another thing, we have to look at the differences in both the characters involved and the resultant situations. If the existence of this bylaw came up in canon, the rest of the girls would naturally ask Shampoo about why she didn't suggest this in the first place - none of them would go along with it (or so they say), but its existence would still make them curious. Shampoo's reply? That she didn't want to share Ranma with Akane. And, really, can you blame her? From Shampoo's perspective, Akane's "tsundere" activities boil down to repeatedly both verbally insisting she doesn't want Ranma at all and beating Ranma up - why would she want to share her husband with a girl who both says she doesn't want him and treats him so badly? Furthermore, Shampoo does not like Akane, she does not respect her (Akane is, in Shampoo's eyes, a bad martial artist), and in fact Akane has actively endangered Shampoo on at least one occasion (the time when Maomolin was going to turn Shampoo into a cat).

In comparison, what's different here? Nabiki is clearly bonded to Ranma; she is also an explicit non-combatant and thusly held to a different set of standards than a "rival warrior" like Akane or Ukyo; and she has also actively helped Shampoo by clearing up the nature of the two Ranmas before Shampoo could do something like kill the man that Shampoo wants to marry. That last reason in particular is why Shampoo is willing to make this offer: Nabiki just earned a lot of brownie points with Shampoo by what she did, and in Shampoo's alien culture, this is a pretty major way to thank her.

So, yes, this little swerve of canon is not coming out of nowhere; we thought about it extensively before we decided to implement it and use it as a major building block for the rest of the story. I'm not saying we're going to have a harem ending, but we are going to exploit Shampoo & Ukyo's engagements to add as much mischief and mayhem to the story as we can, in the spirit of canon. I do hope that you will enjoy seeing how our soon to be trio of leading ladies can butt heads, work against each other and, dare I say, even learn to work together?

And for the curious... no, I don't think that Shampoo is bisexual. She has even stated explicitly in the anime that she wants to return Ranma to his all-male form so she can enjoy having a 24/7 husband (the Japanese Nanniichuan arc, episode 3, for the curious). Just because she's wedding Nabiki doesn't mean she expects to sleep with her. But she's also subject to what TVTropes calls "If It's You, It's Okay"; if she cares for a person, she will express that care physically, and she's indifferent to gender when she does that.

Now, I have a request, my readers...back in chapter 4, I mentioned that I was plotting a Ranma/Resident Evil crossover fanfic. In honor of the release of Resident Evil 3's remake in April, I'd like to have the first chapter to that fic published on that day... the problem is that I can't decide upon a leading lady. Nabiki, Kasumi, Shampoo, Ukyo or Kodachi; any of these girls could offer her own unique traits that would allow for a special spin on the basic concept. So, I'm turning to you readers for help: which girl (or 2 girls, because I feel like I can make a trio of protagonists work with this story if I must) do you most want to see me use as the female protagonist for "Resident Evil: The Wild Horse Chronicles"? The one(s) with the most requests will win the poll, and help me get started on that first chapter.


	11. Mountain Storms Over Nerima!

Authors Notes: Firstly, I wanna thank all the reviewers who offered their input for the Ranma/Resident Evil crossover fic - I really appreciate you all taking so much time and effort! Work proceeds apace, and I hope to have it released on April 3rd, Australia time!

I won't lie, reaction to the last chapter was a bit mixed, but for the most part, it was well received, so thank you all for trusting me with this.

I will admit to being a bit confused why several reviews asserted I was "making Nabiki and/or Shampoo bisexual", though. As I said in the endnotes, sharing Ranma as a husband and actively sleeping together are two separate things. Yes, Shampoo fits what TVTropes calls "If It's You, It's Okay", but that's referring how, in canon, she never shies away from hugging, flirting, or otherwise expressing her attraction to Ranma, regardless of which body Ranma is in at the time. And yes, Nabiki is slowly growing to have the confidence to do that same thing. It's kind of necessary for Ranma's fiancée to be able to accept that, sometimes, Ranma is going to be in female form, especially since I can't cure him this early in the fic. One of the big things holding Ranma and Akane back in early canon is that Akane recoils from Ranma's girl form, due to it being "perverse", and that in turn alienates Ranma by upsetting him - not because he likes being a girl, but because nobody likes to be rejected or to have affection for themselves be conditional. It doesn't mean the girl in question can't or doesn't prefer Ranma in male form, but treating both forms of Ranma the same is a way to convince him that her feelings for him are actually sincere and not superficial.

Also, since somebody pointed it out... it's an old Ranma 1/2 fic writer's tradition to use form-gender specific pronouns when referring to Ranma, simply because it helps make it easier to keep track of which body he's currently in without currently having to insert comments about tits and ass, which the anime/manga could do and a fanfic can't. My also using "fiancée" when Ranma is in female form is just an extension of that. As for the occasional use of "aquatransexual"... aside from it being literally descriptive, it's also a way to break up the monotony of "Ranma said" and "he said" - same reason why I keep using synonyms for "said".

And to the reviewers who kept saying that Kasumi speaks Chinese... did you guys miss the note that she was using a simple Chinese to Japanese translation book, as Nabiki did in the canon?

Jack Inqu: Thank you for saying you liked the ice cream scene! Nabiki, at least in the anime canon, does have a very serious sweet tooth (see "Pelvic Fortune Telling", where she singlehandedly consumes in one sitting a feast consisting of, at the least, a serve of pudding à la mode, a chocolate parfait, a serve of cheesecake, a strawberry tart and a slice of pumpkin pie). So I thought there was a nice bit of comedy and WAFF to be had over Nabiki treating Ranma's confession to having never eaten ice cream before as Serious Business. I really struggled with that section, and personally I'm still not 100% satisfied with it, but I'm glad to see somebody else took it in the spirit that I meant it!

SeerKing: Thanks for your kind words on the icecream scene too! Also... thank you for pointing out that glitch. Stupid FFN anti-spam programming strikes again...

* * *

 _ **Chapter 11: Mountain Storms over Nerima!**_

* * *

It was an odd thing for Ranma to look at Furinkan High as the gates loomed ahead of himself and actually take comfort from the sight. But then, after the morning he and Nabiki had experienced, the banality of school was actually a weird relief; a bastion of normalcy in a day that had been anything but!

Turning to face his fiancée, Ranma sighed. "I'm sorry about Shampoo, Nabiki."

"Don't start apologizing, Ranma - you have nothing to say you're sorry for," the middle Tendo gently reassured him.

"But it's my fault! She wouldn't even be here if it weren't for me!" Ranma protested, not quite understanding how Nabiki could take it in stride.

"If you're going to go that far, you might as well blame this whole mess on your father, for taking you to China in the first place. Personally, I find that far more appealing," Nabiki said with a conspiratory air and mischievous smile.

"But, seriously, Ranma? Do you know what the two scariest things of my recent life were?" she asked, stopping in the street and looking him squarely in the eyes.

Ranma meekly shook his head, without breaking eye contact.

"The first was when you got smashed into the wall fighting the Golden Pair. And the second? It was when I watched Shampoo chasing you off into the night, waving that sword of hers around like a mad executioner. Now, what do you suppose those two things have in common?" she asked rhetorically.

"...You thought I was gonna die?" Ranma humbly suggested, the realization striking him a lot harder than he'd anticipated.

"Bingo! I'm not saying I want to pick out a ring and set a date just yet, but I certainly don't want you dead!" Nabiki declared, poking Ranma in the forehead for emphasis. "If it saves your life, then I can live with being kissed by a girl. Frankly, it's a cheap price to pay."

"I can't believe Shampoo did that," Ranma admitted bashfully, rubbing his neck as he thought back on the moment.

"I can't believe your dad talked mine down by pointing out that this meant you and I were still hitched even in Shampoo's eyes. Honestly, daddy's priorities are all screwed up," Nabiki grizzled.

"Well, I guess that is part of why they're friends... still, we're here now, and Shampoo's back at the dojo, so we don't need to worry about her until we go home," Ranma said, trying to sound optimistic.

"Yeah... I won't lie; I could use a break from the crazy for a while," Nabiki admitted with a worn sigh; the last few days had _not_ been good for her stress levels.

"Maybe we could go out again after school? Give this dating thing another try?" Ranma suggested hopefully.

"Well, third time's the charm," Nabiki agreed , but she was smiling as she said so. "That reminds me... you've been kissed by two girls now, Ranma," she pointed out.

"...Yes?" Ranma cautiously admitted, unsure of what Nabiki was getting at.

"So, I want to know... whose was better?" Nabiki asked sweetly, with a mischievous smirk playing on her lips.

"Yours," Ranma replied immediately .

"Wow, you didn't even hesitate!" Nabiki giggled, a faint blush dusting her cheeks despite her confident attitude.

"Should I have?" Ranma asked, the shell of confidence cracking to reveal a hint of uncertainty beneath.

"Well... I wouldn't have blamed you for being a little conflicted. Shampoo's got some pretty hot lips, as I should know," Nabiki smirked with a small eyebrow waggle.

"...Maybe," Ranma hedged, inexperienced but not stupid. "But I still think you're the better kisser. Although..."

"Yes?" Nabiki asked leadingly, equal parts intrigued and amused by Ranma's painfully obvious attempt to try and play her own game.

"Maybe I could have another? Just to be certain I'm right?" Ranma asked slyly.

"Hmm..." Nabiki hummed loudly, pursing her lips and tapping her chin in an exaggerated "thinker's posture". She coyly watched Ranma's reaction from the corner of her eye, squelching the urge to grin at his visible uncertainty. ' _Poor Ranma... you're still a hundred years too early to try and play this game with me! But, I won't lie; it's kind of adorable to see you try... plus, I think we both deserve a little sugar after how things went this morning...'_

Once Ranma started to sweat, Nabiki finally gave him her most winning grin. "I think we can steal in one kiss before class starts," she purred, spreading her arms wide. Those cursed butterflies made a return visit to her stomach as Ranma smiled in honest delight at her response, before he closed the gap between them and carefully lowered his lips to hers.

This kiss was different, both of them could tell. It wasn't like their first kiss, where Nabiki had tried to pour her emotions into Ranma like a scalding torrent. It wasn't even like their recent respective kisses with Shampoo, where they had felt their mouths being devoured by the rapacious passion of the Chinese Amazon.

No, this kiss was soft and gentle; fumbling a little, as their mutual inexperience showed, but an act of mutual tenderness and trust. It filled their hearts with warmth, sending a comforting glow seeping from their lips and enveloping them from the inside out, a sweetness that soothed the very soul.

Time slipped away from them, the world dwindling to just the two of them and the feel of their arms wrapped around each other.

But all good things must come to an end. Inevitably, the two broke the kiss, opening their eyes and staring into each other's souls, wearing what an observer would call matching half-dazed smiles.

"Wow... definitely better than Shampoo," Ranma chuckled more than a little breathlessly. ' _Is that what a kiss is supposed to be like? Cuz I could do that again!'_

"Flatterer... now, off with you; we have class, and you have another engagement," Nabiki giggled. ' _...But, seriously; wow! If I could bottle that, I'd be rich! ...Or my own best customer...'_

Ranma blinked in confusion. "Huh?"

Still smiling, Nabiki simply pointed past Ranma, to where a blue-and-black-clad figure was rapidly approaching.

"Ranma Saotome! I challenge you to a duel!"

Ranma twisted to face his self-proclaimed rival, a familiar confident smirk blossoming on his face. "You know what, Kuno? I think I'll take you up on that!" he declared, before launching himself at the kendo-practicing senior.

Nabiki watched as the two hurtled towards their clash, smirking with amusement. ' _Boys have such simple pleasures,'_ she mused, even as she began making her way to class.

* * *

Meanwhile, at the Tendo Dojo...

* * *

Seated at the dining room table of a bunch of strangers who were, technically, her in-laws now, pen in hand and paper before her, Shampoo heaved a mournful sigh. "Not the most auspicious start to my married life," she grumbled to herself in the Joketsuzoku tribal dialect.

"All I wanted was an attractive and capable husband, a spouse who could inspire my own pursuit of warrior excellence. A co-wife was never supposed to be part of the deal!" she huffed in a fit of pique. "But... It could be worse. Besides, I owe her a lot; I just thought Ranma was shy, I did not realize I had been trying to kill the man I should have married back at Nyuchiezu! Stupid Jusenkyo... Maybe if I approach her with sufficient humility and self-abasement, Nabiki will deign to assist me in making it up to Ranma..."

"What is that strange Chinese girl muttering about, Saotome?" Soun Tendo asked, glancing up from his shogi board at what was in his mind the biggest threat to the 'joining of the schools' at present.

"Who cares, Tendo?" was Genma's brief yet 'eloquent' reply. "Gotcha!" he barked, slapping down a tile in a key position, making Soun squawk in protest and return his focus to the game lest Saotome steal another lead.

Ignoring the two old men, whom Shampoo had concluded were a pair of fools through their antics of earlier and her limited grasp of the Japanese tongue, the Chinese Amazon bent her attention to the task before her: writing a letter to her great-grandmother to explain what had happened.

' _Great-Grandmother... forgive me, but I sincerely hope that you take your time in getting here. It will be hard enough to make up for my first impression without the testing that the law requires...'_ Shampoo thought to herself.

There was a reason that the law of shared marriages was rarely invoked, even more so than the Kiss of Marriage law itself. It took a special kind of man to keep up with multiple Joketsuzoku warriors, or for it to be considered beneficial to bring in a preexisting spouse in order to keep him happy.

As her family matriarch, it fell upon her great-grandmother to test Ranma and prove that he was worthy to invoke such a law... At least Nabiki was not a fighter, so she would be spared such trials.

It took Shampoo longer than she would be comfortable admitting to finally come up with what she felt was a decently concise letter. She went over it a third time, just to be certain she had covered everything, especially when it came to emphasizing that Ranma was justifiably her betrothed - had she been unwilling to administer the Kiss, she could have easily contested her technically second defeat, since it was, in effect, a fluke strike that had left her out cold - and the importance of the role Nabiki had played in preventing her from making a terrible mistake. Satisfied that she couldn't improve on the fruits of her efforts any further, she blew on it to be certain the ink was dried, and then folded it up into an envelope.

' _Now, to post it! But... where would I find a mailbox? Maybe Kasumi knows?'_ Shampoo pondered.

It didn't take long to find her new "big sister-in-law". Kasumi was obviously the Tendo family's domestic; she was hanging out laundry in the backyard when Shampoo found her.

"Big sister Kasumi? Where Shampoo find mailbox?" Shampoo politely asked her as best her grasp of Japanese allowed. ' _Stupid foreign language... why is it so easy for Mousse? Maybe Ranma and Nabiki will render me assistance in overcoming this limitation...'_

"Oh, Shampoo? You need to mail a letter?" The eldest Tendo daughter asked with equal politeness; she didn't want to patronize their new guest, but thought it best to make sure and risk a moment of unintended rudeness.

"Is to Shampoo great-grandmother. Tell her that Shampoo get married," the Chinese Amazon explained. Then she stopped and thought about it for a moment. "Also, where Shampoo's airens go? Shampoo not see them long time."

Kasumi's brow furrowed gently as she visibly considered Shampoo's questions. "Ranma and Nabiki? They went to school... would you like to know the way? They might enjoy having you visit them during lunch," she suggested; at the very least, it'd get Shampoo out and not pouting around the house.

Shampoo beamed with delight at Kasumi's idea. "That be too-too good! You tell Shampoo, please?"

In fact, Kasumi did more than tell Shampoo; she actually got a pen and paper and drew Shampoo a list of directions, once the last of her laundry had been hung out to dry. Shampoo thanked her new in-law, and eagerly hopped over the roof to begin exploring Nerima.

' _Such a sweet girl... I would almost think that she actually did not mind my being here... I must do something nice for her, as soon as possible...'_ the Chinese Amazon noted to herself as she left.

* * *

Lunch time, Furinkan High...

* * *

Hopping onto the wall separating the grounds of Furinkan High from the outer world, Shampoo took in the extensive structure and the teeming teens with an inquisitive gaze. ' _It is all so different here than it was in the village,'_ she mused to herself. ' _But, this is not helping me... onward!'_

The Chinese Amazon kicked off of the walls and landed neatly on the grounds of Furinkan, before setting off to explore. Whilst her exotic hair color and beauty attracted many inquisitive gazes, the time she'd chosen to arrive actually worked to her advantage; most of the students were more concerned with enjoying their lunches or squeezing in what socialization they could before class started.

' _Now, where to begin... huh? What is that?'_ Shampoo pricked up as she faintly heard something very familiar to her; the sounds of combat. Masculine battle cries and the distant echo of blows being traded. She grinned excitedly, and took off in the direction of the sounds. ' _That must be Ranma! Ooh, maybe I'll get to see him fighting!'_

Unfortunately, luck was not with Shampoo that day. Instead of her husband, she found herself watching as one youth - a tall, handsome brunette boy - wielding a wooden sword did battle with a small gaggle of similarly armed youths. Although... calling it "battle" was perhaps a stretch too far. The lone youth was clearly the superior fighter , as he mowed through the ranks of his opponents like a farmer scything through rice.

Shampoo watched the proceedings with an appreciative eye; though their fundamental styles were different, she could appreciate the efforts of another swordsman, and she nodded critically as the strange youth devastated his foes. ' _Not bad... I have seen better swordsplay in the village, but not bad at all. Handsome, too. He might make a good catch, if I wasn't already engaged,'_ she mused.

As the last of the lesser swordsmen fell in a semiconscious heap at his feet, the undefeated champion let out a growl of frustration. "Bah! You're all slacking off! Not one of you can help challenge me the way I need!" he grumbled.

Shampoo took this as an opportunity to get closer. ' _Maybe he knows Ranma? Strong fighters tend to know each other, right?'_ she considered. Out loud, she instead said, "Impressive! You too-too strong swordsman!"

The youth turned to face her, a brief expression of surprise quickly replaced by one of smug satisfaction. "But of course! Not for nothing do my peers know Tatewaki Kuno as the Blue Thunder of Furinkan High!" he bragged. "But tell me, fair maiden; what brings you to me? Perhaps you seek a date?" he suggested with a smirk.

"Nabiki Tendo and Ranma Saotome. You know them?" Shampoo asked flatly. ' _And there's the catch... should have known he had some kind of drawback...'_

At her words, Kuno wilted momentarily, but swiftly regained his composure. "Nabiki Tendo? You will probably find her in room 2-E. I don't know where Ranma Saotome goes," he told her perfunctory .

"Thank you!" Shampoo chirped happily. ' _That makes things much better!'_ she cheered internally. She was about to set off, then she paused for a moment's thought. ' _Hmm... he did help me out... one good turn deserves another...'_ Turning back to Kuno, she said, "You want tip? One swordsman to another?"

"Eh? Forgive me, fair one, but what would a lady like yourself know of swordsplay?" Kuno responded, plainly scoffing at the offer despite an attempt to sound polite.

Throwing a deadpan look at the kendoist, Shampoo withdrew her dao from its sheath within a ki pocket and twirled it around her hand, turning it into a circular blur of razor edges before, in a single movement, halting the spin by snatching its handle and making a lazy-seeming backstroke at a nearby tree... Which promptly slid off of its trunk and collapsed on the ground, cut cleanly in two.

Kuno blinked at the display, then put on a conciliatory smile that looked like it pained him slightly to make. "My apologies, my lady, but I did not recognize you for one who practiced the art... you were saying?"

"You strong martial artist, but if want to get better? Then work on strength train, speed train. Push self to go faster and hit harder. Also? You master forms already. Is good. But real fight no is same as dojo. Forms only get you so far," Shampoo advised him. Then, without waiting for Kuno's reaction, she turned and headed towards what was obviously the school building, locked onto her target.

In her wake, one of Furinkan's kendo club members sneered disdainfully. "Some tip! Stupid foreign bimbo..."

Without looking, Kuno lazily swatted the speaker atop the head with a backhanded stroke of his bokken. "At least she offered sincere advice! Something that cannot be said about you, Gokkun," he reprimanded his underling.

Then he scratched his chin thoughtfully. "Strength training... yes... that Hibiki boy, he offered Saotome quite the challenge, and his umbrella was clearly weighted... there is merit to her words..." he mused. "As for the forms... I wonder... could there be truth to what she spake...?"

* * *

In Room 2-E...

* * *

"So...? C'mon, Nabiki; spill it! What did you and your pet stallion do on your date?" Ryonami wheedled, a lecherous grin on the brunette's face as she tried to coax the juicy details from her friend.

"A lady never kisses and tells, Ryonami," Nabiki primly chastised her, the smug smirk on her lips and her flippant tone belying her words.

"A lady doesn't kiss her boyfriend's brains out in front of a live audience, but that didn't stop you," Ryonami quipped back. "C'mon, spill!"

"Leave her alone, Ryonami - it's personal!" Kikuko protested, the copper-mopped teen's cheeks flushed red at Ryonami's forthright antics.

"Aw, as if you don't want to know too, Kikuko," Ryonami teased.

"Well, if you ladies really must know," Nabiki drawled, playacting up the concession she was making. "There's not really much to say. All we did was go to an icecream parlor... can you believe Ranma's father is so much of a jerk that he's never let Ranma have icecream in his life?! I know!" she added once her friends reacted with appropriately scandalized gasps of shock. "Unfortunately, things... kind of got a little crazy, and the date ended up as a bust."

"Again? That's so cruel," Kikuko mourned.

"What happened, Nabiki?" Ryonami asked, her ears pricking at the potential for gossip.

"There's nothing really to talk about, it's all in the past, and won't be coming up again," Nabiki replied.

And with that perfect cue, the doors to the classroom suddenly exploded as something slammed into them so hard that they swung backwards with enough velocity to tear their hinges out of the door, leaving them as a pile of wreckage strewn on the floor. "Nabiki Tendo! Is you here?" cried an unfamiliar feminine voice.

"Oh, no..." Nabiki moaned, wilting in her seat as recognition dawned on her.

Kikuko and Ryonami simply stared dumbstruck at the stranger who had literally burst onto the scene - as did the rest of class 2-E, for that matter. It wasn't every day that their classroom was visited by a cute Chinese girl with a body to die for and a long, flowing mane of blue-purple hair. Nor was it every day that their doors were smashed into kindling, for that matter. Add the two together, and it was something that the seniors would be talking about for a while. The stranger's eyes scanned the room, and then her face lit up in a smile that had virtually all of the boys present (as well as a few of the girls, not that they would admit it) swooning in joy at the thought of it being aimed at them.

"Nihao, airen!" the strange girl chirped, skipping through the open doors and straight over to... Nabiki Tendo?! As one, the students gawked at the sight - who was this girl, and what the heck could somebody like her want with Nabiki, of all people?!

"Shampoo... what are you doing here?" Nabiki groaned in exasperation.

The wounded pout that the girl in question adopted at the words of Furinkan's greatest hustler and black marketeer tugged at the heartstrings of the resident white knights... and some of the "I'll act nice if it'll get me laid" knights, too. "Shampoo come to see new wife, make sure Nabiki okay! Where Ranma?"

"He's probably in his homeroom - class 1-F. Why don't you go and hang out with him?" Nabiki tersely suggested.

"Shampoo go! But, want to thank Nabiki again. Maybe we make nice too, soon?" Shampoo suggested, her earnest expression not changing an iota.

Before Nabiki could even begin to reply to that lewd-sounding suggestion, she found herself enfolded in a mighty hug from her unwanted new fiancée... which of course resulted in her being smothered in Shampoo's bosom and thusly confirming firsthand that the Chinese Amazon really was as stacked as she looked. ' _What is in the water in that part of China...?'_ a stray part of her brain commented acerbically, even as the rest of her was divided up between trying to breath and blushing fit to fry an egg on her forehead at being hugged like this in front of her classmates.

"Bai-bai, airen! Shampoo see you after school!" the bubbly Chinese Amazon chirped, before releasing her victim and bouncing off in pursuit of Ranma.

Kikuko and Ryonami watched her go, then turned tentatively to their friend and technically boss. "Um... Nabiki? Is there something you want to tell us?" Kikuko hesitantly asked.

Nabiki promptly did something they hadn't seen her do since they'd all been in Junior High together, planting her face squarely into the cold, unwelcoming surface of her desk.

* * *

And in Room 1-F...

* * *

Akane took a deep breath, gritted her teeth, and did what was, in some ways, the hardest thing that she'd done that year. "Ranma? I'm sorry about last night... I know, I should have listened to what Nabiki said, but it was just so impossible, I really couldn't believe it," she apologetically explained to him.

Her future brother-in-law simply grunted in acknowledgement, not even looking up from where he was devouring the bento that Kasumi had prepared that morning despite the chaos.

Akane glared at Ranma, feeling a vein tick in her forehead as she clenched her fists tight. "Oh, come on! Who could have possibly predicted somebody like Shampoo was actually for real?!" she cried a touch plaintively.

Which was naturally when the classroom doors exploded. Akane let out a shriek of shock and instinctively twisted into a guard posture, whilst the other students yelped and cowered or dove for cover.

"Ranma! Where he?"

The Saotome heir promptly choked on a mouthful. "Sh-sh-Shampoo!" he gasped in shock. ' _Don't tell me she's gone back to bloodthirsty again!?'_

Almost as soon as he'd formed the thought, Shampoo spotted Ranma and the biggest smile split her face. "Ranma airen!" she squealed in glee, before diving for him with such speed that, to the untrained students of room 1-F, she seemed to teleport.

Ranma himself, caught off guard, couldn't even try to dodge as she tackled him out of his chair with a mighty glomp, throwing him to the floor in a passionate embrace that not-so-coincidentally left his face shoved into her bosom. "Nihao, airen! Shampoo looking for you!" she chirped merrily, nuzzling in close.

"Ack! C'mon, Shampoo, not in public!" Ranma protested, weakly it must be said. Had Nabiki not 'okayed' this, he might have more stridently refused but as of now he at least wished Shampoo could save this for private...and more thorough ground rules.

By this point, the other students were peeking out of hiding, and of course they had their opinions on what they were seeing.

"Whoa, who is she?! She's absolutely smoking hot!"

"And why's she hanging all over Saotome?"

"You think he ditched Nabiki for her?"

"Wouldn't you?"

"Shut yer mouths!" Ranma snapped immediately, throwing a glare at whichever foolish soul had been so unwise as to slander his fiancée within his hearing.

Unnoticed by Ranma, Shampoo winced at this little reminder that she placed distinctly second in his list of affections. ' _But perhaps this is fortuitous... a little reminder that I am not demanding he abandon her may help my case...'_ she mused to herself.

"That right, Ranma ditch nobody! Shampoo sharing Ranma!" the Chinese Amazon boasted.

It was the absolute horror in Ranma's eyes that made Shampoo realize that maybe that hadn't been such a smart thing to say, before the whole classroom erupted into chaos.

She actually found herself forced to release her new husband and step back as the other students swarmed over Ranma, shouting a mixture of encouragement, questions and curses.

Taking stock of the mess, Shampoo mentally cursed herself. ' _Great... another misstep. What else could go wrong?'_ Of course, Murphy loves a challenge.

"Haven't you caused enough trouble already? What are you even doing here, Shampoo?" Akane demanded angrily, none of the 'well-wishers' wanting to risk getting in her way.

The Chinese Amazon bristled at the youngest Tendo's tone. Whilst she knew that a certain amount of concession was required given her disruptive first impression, Shampoo had no intention of being anyone's doormat! "Shampoo come to see husband!" she snapped back.

"Get it through your head! He's not your husband!" Akane barked, her body hunching up in an effort to intimidate the foreign girl.

"Yes he is! Ever since he beat Shampoo in China!" Was the prompt riposte, said firmly if heatedly.

"Wait, what?! That counts?!" Ranma interjected incredulously; he really needed to get a rulebook or something for their laws so he stopped getting blind-sided by these revelations.

"Yes," Shampoo replied immediately, luckily nobody noticed that it was a bit quicker than it should have been. ' _He doesn't need to know that there is some ambiguity about that... I mean, they would most likely rule that it counted, so why confuse the issue?'_

"Oh, and that justifies you showing up and making a mess out of everything?" Akane demanded. It would be nice to say that her motivation was making amends for endangering Ranma the previous evening. It would even be true. But, sadly, Akane was getting a little caught up in her own indignation...

"Shampoo sorry for what she do! That why Shampoo here; make nice-nice with husband! You want fight, Akane? Sister or no, Shampoo nobody's doormat!" the Chinese Amazon scowled.

"I am not your sister!" Akane snapped, now angered at the presumption and what it implied.

"Whoa, whoa, hold on there, Akane! You don't want to pick a fight with Shampoo!" Ranma interjected, reaching out to place a hand on Akane's shoulder in an instinctive effort to hold her back.

"Butt out, Ranma!" Akane barked, instinctively backhanding him with all her might.

Caught off-guard by this sudden attack, Ranma's reflexes failed him and instead he found himself flying through the air and right out a window!

"Airen!" Shampoo screamed in shock, frozen in place for a critical second before she kickstarted her brain back into gear and leapt for the window. "Is you okay?!" she cried, thrusting her head out the window, afraid of what she might see... only to slump in relief as she saw Ranma squatting unharmed upon a convenient treebranch about two storeys down, shaking his head to clear his senses.

"Airen? You okay?" she asked again, this time in a calmer tone.

Ranma simply touched his already red and swollen cheek, hissing in pain. ' _She hit me! I was trying to help her, and she actually hit me!'_ Shock and anger welled up within him like oil from a deep well, and he glowered up at Shampoo. "I'm fine...just... don't hurt her too badly, alright?" he asked, his sense of generosity clashing with his rage and straining his moral fibre.

"No worry, airen. Shampoo not hurt Akane... too badly. But little sister needs a spanking," Shampoo growled, feeling the rush of warmth as the faintest hint of a battle aura flickered to life around her head. She turned to face her most distinctly annoying new sister-in-law, a menacing sneer on her face.

"Bring it on, China girl!" Akane spat defiantly, already bringing her hands up into a fighting stance. Without the slightest hesitance, she charged her Chinese tormentor, intent on avenging the suffering and shame that Shampoo had inflicted upon her sister!

' _Ranma beat her twice already; I know I can win!'_ she assured herself.

...Unfortunately, Akane had made a critical error with her logic. Yes, Shampoo had lost to Ranma. But then, so had several other skilled martial artists of Akane's acquaintance, including both of the Kuno sibles, Ryoga Hibiki, and even Akane herself. "Beatable by Ranma Saotome" was a fairly wide spectrum of martial arts ability, one that didn't necessarily correlate to "beatable by Akane Tendo". Something she found herself reminded of when Shampoo proceeded to dodge every single punch, kick, chop and sweep that the youngest Tendo threw at her.

"Damnit! C'mon, fight me for real!' Akane protested, assuming that if Shampoo stopped dancing around she would be able to land a hit.

"Sloppy, sister. You too-too slow," Shampoo mockingly observed, exaggerating her dodges to illustrate just how easy it was.

"Rargh! I'll show you slow!" Akane spat, putting everything she had into the mother of all haymakers!

...Only for history to repeat itself as Shampoo glided around the attack as if it were moving in slow motion, slipping behind Akane faster than the Tendo dojo's heir could react. An icy chill ran down her spine... mere microseconds before Shampoo's open palm connected with her rump with sufficient force to elicit a thunderous clap that echoed through the classroom! Akane literally leapt into the air in shock and pain, barely managing to salvage some dignity by biting down the instinctive squall of protest at being spanked before it could escape her.

"Now we even, sister! You hit Ranma again, Shampoo hit you!" the Chinese Amazon warned, smirking in self-satisfaction as Akane instinctively clutched her bruised and aching posterior.

"Y-you, you... cheater!" Akane protested, cheeks burning red with a mixture of rage and embarrassment at what had been done to her. It didn't help that she spotted Ranma crouching in the open window out of the corner of her eye, and she realized he'd leapt back up just in time to see her humiliation.

"Shampoo not need to cheat to punish Akane," her tormentor scoffed at the idea she's sink that low against an opponent.

The end of lunch period bell rang at that moment, and Akane took some small pleasure as her backwoods assailant visibly started at the sound.

"Aiyah! What noise?" Shampoo asked, looking all around in confusion.

"It means class is about to start, Shampoo, so you can't be here. You'll get in trouble if the teachers catch you," Ranma explained patiently.

The Chinese Amazon expression fell, annoyed that Akane's interruptions had ruined the moment she'd hope to get with Ranma. "Okay, airen, Shampoo go... see you after class?" she suggested hopefully, visibly perking up as the thought struck her.

"I... guess...?" Ranma hesitantly replied.

Shampoo rewarded him with a beatific smile that lit up her face. "Is date, then! Bai-bai, airen!" she chirped, before lunging at Ranma in another high-speed tackle-hug.

She glomped onto him good and hard, giving him the tightest embrace he'd ever had (not that Ranma had much of a history of being hugged, admittedly), before she bounded away through the shattered remnants of the door that she'd used to enter the classroom.

Ranma watched her go, and heaved a sigh of relief. ' _What am I going to do about this mess?'_ he lamented.

* * *

After school...

* * *

"Yo, Nabiki!"

Nabiki Tendo looked up and smiled faintly as she saw her fiancé approaching, waving his hand and smiling. "Ah; perfect timing, Ranma; walk me home?" she suggested hopefully.

"Sure!" he replied with a grin. Once he'd caught up to her, the two of them started off, wending their way through the crowds of students caught up in their post-school plans.

"So... Shampoo paid me a visit at lunch today," Ranma hesitantly began.

"I know. She visited me first," Nabiki commiserated.

"Are you okay? Did she hurt you?!" Ranma immediately interjected, his eyes immediately roaming over Nabiki's body in order to check her for potential harm.

Nabiki blinked, surprised by his reaction, but then smiled at his concern. "What? No, nothing like that! She just wanted to know where you were... she did hug me in front of the whole class, though," she added as an afterthought.

"Really? I'm... wow, I never thought she'd do that," Ranma said with a small huff of pleased bemusement.

"I suppose it could have been worse. Did you really think she'd hurt me?" Nabiki asked, a touch concerned that this 'dual marriage' with Shampoo might be more dangerous than she first though.

"She did chase me from China trying to kill me... you can't really blame me for being cautious," Ranma defended himself.

 _'Ah, so just a weee bit...sword shy.'_ Nabiki thought with a touch of relief

"Not at all. I'm just impressed you're still being cautious about her. Lot of guys wouldn't be nervous about a girl like her," Nabiki smirked, miming an outline in the air about her cleavage to make it clear what she was insinuating.

Ranma blushed and averted his, which only deepened Nabiki's amusement. "I don't fall for dumb stuff like that... she did spill the beans about this stupid threesome marriage thing of hers to my class, though."

"Don't worry about it, Ranma; she did the same in front of my classmates too," Nabiki sighed. "Is that all that happened?"

"Well... she did spank Akane," Ranma uncomfortably admitted.

"She did what?" Nabiki asked, giving Ranma an icily questioning look.

"In fairness, she did it only after Akane backhanded me out of the window," her fiancé explained, unsure of why but compelled to be fair.

"She did **what?!** But your classroom's on the third floor!" an appalled Nabiki pointed out.

"Yeah... Shampoo did kinda say that's why she felt Akane needed a spanking," Ranma drawled. He did his best to keep from smirking as he did; he knew it'd been an accident, and it was important to Nabiki, but still, the look on Akane's face at getting slapped on the ass like a naughty little kid would be giving him pleasant dreams for a while...

Forcing that thought away, he sighed, playing it up just a little. "I swear, I don't know what's going through her head," he confessed, but before Nabiki could ask if he meant Akane or Shampoo, they were interrupted again by a familiar voice.

"Nihao, airens!" a familiar feminine voice suddenly rang out.

"Speak of the oni,' Nabiki muttered to Ranma ruefully.

Both teens still put on neutral expressions as Shampoo jogged up to them, smiling in delight and waving a hand to attract their attention. "Shampoo waiting for you! What we do now?"

" **We** were going to go and just explore Nerima, hang out... you know, normal _couple_ things?" Nabiki replied, stressing the words that she hoped would emphasize that she intended this not-quite-a-date to be just her and Ranma.

"Sound good! Shampoo so new here... this place too-too-strange. Airens help Shampoo learn streets?" the Chinese Amazon asked eagerly, giving her two unwilling spouses her best "cutely big-eyed, sweet-looking hopeful smile" expression complete with fluttering lashes. ' _Please, say yes! This marriage will be hard enough if we do not start trying to connect with each other...'_

Ranma gritted his teeth. ' _Damn it, why do I suck so much at saying no to cute girls?'_ he lamented in the privacy of his own head. He cast a desperate look at his real fiancée, who looked between them and sighed in open defeat. "Alright... I suppose that you can come along too."

"Yay! Shampoo so happy!" she squealed, literally bouncing up and down joyfully with her hands clasped in glee. Then she stopped and smiled at them expectantly. "So, where we go?"

* * *

Some time later...

* * *

To Nabiki's relief, playing tour guide for Shampoo was not as painful as she had anticipated. Shampoo stuck close to the pair of them, but she didn't get touchy feely. And whilst it was obviously the Chinese girl who was getting the bulk of the benefit from being introduced to the Nerima district, Ranma was also finding this interesting as well.

Apart from a handful of exceptions, he hadn't actually had the chance to really explore his new residence outside of the route between the Tendo Dojo and Furinkan High.

In fact, if you twisted Nabiki's arm, she would have admitted that it was actually kind of fun - and giving her a few ideas for future dates with Ranma.

That arcade they'd just passed by had actually looked sort of fun, even though she wasn't normally the kind of girl to waste spare yen on video-games and pachinko machines.

"Airens? What is funny red and white building?" Shampoo suddenly interjected.

"Hm?" Ranma instinctively followed the Chinese girl's pointing finger. "That's a Kentucky Fried Chicken, Shampoo. It's a sort of restaurant from America. They sell junk food."

"Junk... food?" Shampoo repeated, brow furrowed as she sounded the words out. "Shampoo no understand."

"It's, ah... food that you can't eat too much of it too often, or you'll get fat," Ranma explained, a little hesitantly.

"Then why eat it?" Shampoo asked, looking even more puzzled.

"Because it tastes way better than it should," Nabiki chimed in.

"Is good?" Shampoo repeated now looking much more interested.

"People really like it. It's practically a tradition to eat the stuff on Christmas, too," Nabiki explained.

"Yeah... for me and pop, it was our only real Christmas tradition," Ranma interjected. He was looking over at the restaurant with a wistful smile. "No matter what, we always had a meal at KFC on Christmas day. It was pops' idea of a present," he explained.

Nabiki looked from her wistful fiancé to the intrigued Shampoo and back again, and then sighed softly in resignation. ' _Oh, what am I going to do with you both? Still, it's been awhile since I treated myself...'_ She conceded. "Alright, alright, we'll stop and have some, okay?"

"You mean it, Nabiki?" Ranma asked excitedly, giving Nabiki a happy smile that made her treacherous heart skip a beat and forced her to smile back.

Shampoo just beamed happily, clearly excited by the chance to spend more time in close proximity with the two of them.

"But you're paying for your own share," Nabiki added firmly. "I'm not a charity," she insisted, trying to wipe the grin off of her face as she said so.

"Oh, sure, Nabiki, I understand," Ranma responded. He was doing even worse at hiding his smile than Nabiki was, and the tone of his voice made it clear he was playing along with her attitude.

Minutes later, the trio had used their pooled funds to buy three large cups of Coca-Cola and a 21-piece bucket, with a mixture of both original recipe and hot & spicy at Ranma's behest, before taking a seat at one of the restaurant's tables.

Shampoo was holding her first piece, an original recipe drumstick, and staring at it inquisitively, turning it over and over in her fingertips like it was truly the most fascinating thing that she'd ever seen, to the palpable amusement of her dinner-mates.

"Go on, give it a try. It won't bite," Ranma urged her on, having fun with seeing his once-tormentor in such uncertainty.

Shampoo delicately sniffed it, and then then gave it a cautious lick, a sight that made Nabiki snicker. The Chinese Amazon smacked her lips, clearly intrigued, and then finally gave her piece a bite.

At once her eyes lit up in shock and she swooned, placing a hand on her cheek (and unwittingly smearing grease on her skin). "Wow! Is so good!" she chirped, before ravenously attacking the remaining meat.

"Civilization has its advantages," Nabiki quipped, grinning at the Chinese Amazon's child-like enthusiasm.

"Joketsuzoku plenty civilized!" Shampoo rebutted with a cute frown.

"Just not have strange outsider food like this," she conceded, sucking the last smears of grease and crumbs from her fingers. She reached for a second piece and began chewing on it.

"And being forced to marry a guy just because he beat you in a fight is civilized? What if Ranma had turned out to be some kind of cruel brute?" Nabiki shot back.

"Hey!" an indignant Ranma protested from where he was mangling a hot & spicy thigh.

"There rules about that. If husband is bad, Chinese Amazon can get divorced," Shampoo replied calmly. "But airen Ranma is good man. Shampoo can tell!"

"How's that?" Nabiki asked inquisitively. ' _Maybe there's a way we can persuade her to drop this crazy threesome scheme...'_

"Simple! Ranma never hurt Shampoo once, even when Shampoo chase in China. Ranma better than Shampoo. Could stop Shampoo permanently. Not even need kill Shampoo - could just cripple Shampoo. But always, Ranma try to avoid hurt Shampoo. Him have too-too good heart. Make wonderful husband," Shampoo announced proudly, giving Ranma a look of appreciative affection.

Nabiki cast a sidelong glance at Ranma, who was blushing in embarrassment. "Well, I can't fault you on taste," she admitted.

"Shampoo have excellent taste," the Chinese Amazon bragged, before snatching a hot & spicy piece right from under Ranma's nose and taking a bite. "Ooh, this one crunchy," she noted with glee... before the unexpected heat of her new meal registered and her eyes went wide. "Whoo! Spicy too," she noted, although to her credit she didn't seem to be handling it too poorly.

As the trio sat and ate, they had no idea that, in time, they would look back on this as when the first tentative step towards peace between them was being taken...

* * *

Late that evening...

* * *

Shampoo sighed mournfully, swishing her hand through the steamy hot water of her bath. Whilst hardly an unknown back in the village, she had to admit, it was nice not to have to build a fire or run a generator beforehand, since electricity was prioritized, a necessity in a region where the lines were often unreliable. But she had things other than bathing weighing on her mind.

' _So much distrust... they will not even let me sleep with my husband! I already told them I would share him with Nabiki, so why all the fuss? Forcing me to sleep in an entirely separate room... it is not natural! ...Then again, Nabiki said that she herself does not sleep with Ranma... these Japanese are strange people...'_

She hugged herself, slumping so that her chin dipped into the water. ' _I know I cannot expect miracles, but, still, I had hoped for a slightly improved reception...'_

The sound of somebody fiddling with the door made Shampoo perk up, curiosity prompting her to twist about in the bath to face the door. Communal bathing was far from unheard of amongst the Joketsuzoku, but it was mostly reserved for family, close friends and lovers. 'Maybe I was thinking too soon?' Shampoo mused.

Her eyes widened as her husband strode through the door, only a deceptively tiny towel about his waist keeping him from being totally naked. ' _Ohhh... my...'_ Slowly, her head bobbed up and down as she drank in every glorious naked inch of muscle. ' _Thank you, great spirits...'_

Sadly, Ranma did not seem so happy to see her already sitting in the bath. "Sh-Shampoo!" he screamed, recoiling in what seemed to be palpable fear to Shampoo.

"Nihao, airen! You come bathe with Shampoo?" she asked excitedly, standing up in the tub. ' _Oh, please say yes! We are engaged; spouses bathe together!'_

Instead, Ranma literally turned tail and fled the way he came, shouting over his shoulder, "I'm sorry I didn't mean to-I didn't see anything I didn't know you were in there!"

"But airen! Shampoo not mind!" the Chinese Amazon protested plaintively, only to be drowned out by the sound of the bathroom door to the rest of the house slamming shut.

"...Aw, phooey," Shampoo mumbled, wilting back down into the steamy hot water again. She shuffled around and deliberately turned her back to the door, giving a little growl as she let the heat soak away her now spoiled mood.

 _This is going to be tougher than I thought_ She grumped mentally, now doubly hopeful that her grandmother would take her time. Shampoo would need everything she could get.

* * *

Early the next morning...

* * *

Shampoo sprang awake, honed instincts compelling her to rise as noises reached her sensitive ear - familiar noises at that; the sounds of combat.

She blinked rapidly, adjusting to the darkness around her, until she realized she was all alone in a room that she initially didn't recognize. The memory quickly flooded back, but was dismissed as she went to the window and flung it open to try and track down what had woken her up.

She stretched and then smiled as she realized that her husband was currently battling her father-in-law in the garden, her grin taking on a savage edge; despite their new familial ties, she still owed Genma Saotome a debt of pain and blood for his role in making her life so much more complicated... and she was in the mood to collect.

Springing up onto the sill, she launched herself into the air, descending on the oblivious Genma like a diving hawk. "Nihao!" she cried, grinning wickedly as she dropped like a stone, perfectly targeted to ensure that when Genma instinctively glanced up in shock, her bare foot slammed into his face and sent him rolling across the grass.

To Genma's credit, and Shampoo's own surprise, he quickly arrested his tumble and used his own momentum to propel himself back to his feet, taking up a defensive stance. Ranma himself eyed Shampoo cautiously, but she made no attempt to attack him - aside from the fact that she knew Ranma was her superior in martial arts for now, she was far more interested in breaking down the wall between them. Beating Genma senseless? Well that was a bonus.

Trusting Ranma would understand her intentions, Shampoo deliberately left herself open to him as she launched herself at Genma, unleashing a flurry of strikes with both fists and feet. Surprisingly, Genma actually dodged or deflected each of her attacks, even going so far as to catch her by the leg and pull on it, turning her own momentum against Shampoo in order to yank her off of her feet and swing her around before sending her flying over the grass, stopping only when she hit the wall.

The Chinese Amazon shook her head, trying to force her senses to reboot. ' _Not bad! Martial arts skill must definitely run in the family... I did not know he had it in him!'_ she idly mused to herself in that brief moment between dazedness and full cognition. Springing to her feet, she launched herself back at Genma, who was currently fending off an assault from his son and thus leaving himself vulnerable to a second assailant.

Genma put up a valiant effort, but with both teens ganging up on him, it was inevitable that Genma alone took a trip into the koi pond before breakfast that day. As the man-turned-panda rose sullenly from the murky waters, Shampoo beamed proudly at Ranma.

' _See, darling? I may not be your equal yet, but I am still a strong martial artist! Recognize that we share the bond of combat,'_ she thought to herself. When Ranma actually smiled back, however faintly, and gave her a tiny nod of respect, Shampoo preened with delight, biting back the urge to squeal in glee at this glimpse of light at the end of her long, dark tunnel.

Breakfast went fairly normally, with Shampoo pointedly seating herself at Ranma's side, but opposite to Nabiki; she would have happily sat in between to be closer to both of them, but she figured that they wouldn't take that gesture the way that she meant it. Once the meal was over, Ranma and Nabiki left for school, along with Akane... leaving Shampoo all alone again.

She tried to be a good sport about it. She helped Kasumi clean up what was left over from breakfast - and cast a stink-eye at Soun & Genma for refusing to offer help in the same way, who ignored her and instead played a game of shogi before leaving on their own mysterious errands - and then she parked herself in front of the television, hoping to at least benefit from improving her Japanese skills.

That helped to pass the time for a while, but Shampoo had never been the biggest television fan, unlike some of the other young Joketsuzoku. When her idle channel-surfing brought her onto a cooking show, however, she perked up. ' _How fortuitous! What is that old saying about winning hearts through stomachs? At the very least, it is superior to sitting around here all day!'_

"Big sister Kasumi?" Shampoo asked, twisting around to look at the eldest Tendo daughter.

"Yes, Shampoo? What is it?" she replied.

"Shampoo want make too-too delicious dinner for airens Ranma and Nabiki tonight! Can Shampoo do?"

Kasumi blinked. ' _She can cook? I never even thought about that...'_ The Tendos' surrogate matriarch mused. "Well, that sounds nice. What were you thinking of making?" she politely inquired.

"Shampoo not sure yet. Know many delicious recipes! Was thinking Shampoo go to market, see what available?" the Chinese Amazon suggested.

Kasumi thought it over. 'Well, she does seem sincere, and she, Nabiki and Ranma do need to get to know each other better... plus, Chinese food would be a special treat...' Mind made up, she nodded. "Alright then, Shampoo. Let me just get you some money... do you need me to show you to the market?" she asked.

Shampoo shook her head. "Thank you, big sister, but airens show Shampoo around yesterday! Shampoo be alright."

"Well, if you're sure," Kasumi acquiesced, before getting up to go and dip into the week's shopping allowance. Once she returned and handed the money over, Shampoo shot up, bowed in thanks to Kasumi, and then took off like a rocket, hopping over the property fence and sprinting off in the direction of the market.

Admittedly, Shampoo really hadn't seen all that much of Nerima so far; even Nabiki's impromptu tour-guide session yesterday hadn't done much more than show the Chinese Amazon what lay within a small radius between the Tendo Dojo and Furinkan High. But still, the market was definitely her favorite place in Nerima so far.

In many ways, it reminded her of the annual intertribal markets back home, when different tribes from the Byankalas came together to sell and trade with each other. Her great-grandmother had always touted it as promoting stronger ties between the oft-fractious peoples of the region. To Shampoo, it'd been an excuse to party and have fun.

Not having a clear meal plan at the moment, Shampoo simply began to drift around the market, taking in what was available and considering her options. Unfortunately, simply blending into the background wasn't really feasible for somebody who was both an attractive young woman and crowned with a flowing mane of blue-purple hair. Eyes followed her wherever she went, some disapproving, others very interested indeed...

"Whoo-hoo! Hey, baby, you are on fire!" Whooped a male voice from behind the Chinese Amazon.

Shampoo blinked and turned to face the source of the obnoxious voice that had just called out to her. "Pardon?" she asked, trying to be diplomatic.

"Whoa, mama, she's stacked! Hey, cutie, why don'tcha come over 'ere an' have some fun with us, eh?" A second male called out to her.

Shampoo simply stared at her... "suitors"; a gaggle of about half a dozen Japanese youths, squatting in an alley, and dressed like they had literally made a checklist of the stereotypical Japanese delinquent garb. "Shampoo not interested," she replied coldly.

"Whoo! Hot an' dumb! The best possible combination," cackled one of the thugs, a moon-faced teen wearing a surgical mask with a bullseye symbol sloppily sketched on it.

"Ah, shaddup, Ohta!" jeered the thug's apparent leader, standing out with his ridiculous blond-dyed battering ram pompadour hairstyle and several drawn-on scars on his cheeks. "She's a smart girl who knows better than to make Awesome Adachi mad! Ain't that right, toots?" he leered, flashing her a suave wink.

"Not if Shampoo drunk and dead," the Chinese Amazon declared flatly.

"You leave Shampoo alone, and Shampoo not hurt you," she added in warning.

The delinquents burst out laughing. "A chick? Hurt us? Yeah, right!" they jeered.

Shampoo sighed, and then cracked her knuckles, remembering past encounters with similar youths in cities both elsewhere in Japan and back in China. "Shampoo try to be nice..." she complained... before launching herself at the delinquents.

It was over in seconds. Far quicker than it took to say it, Shampoo had flattened all six of them in a storm of precisely aimed strikes, each left slumped in a moaning heap on the ground. "Next time Shampoo say leave Shampoo alone, you listen!" she spat, before turning her back on them.

Which was when something in a nearby butcher shop window caught her eye. "Aiyah! That it! Shampoo know what to make for dinner!" she cheered, hopping up and down in glee before hurrying to get through the door.

* * *

Meanwhile, at Furinkan High...

* * *

"This time, Ranma Saotome, it is I who shall be the victor!" Tatewaki Kuno bragged, even as he hurtled towards his sworn rival.

"I've heard that before, Kuno!" Ranma shot back, smirking in anticipation of another quick victory. Sure enough, Kuno made the expected horizontal sweeping strike, which Ranma deftly negated by clapping the bokken's blade between his hands.

"Predictable! I saw this coming from a mile away!" he mocked.

"Wretch! But did you foresee this?" Kuno shot back, before doing something that nobody in Furinkan High's kendo club would have ever conceived him doing, an attack that would have disqualified him from any formal kendo tournament: he delivered a clumsy but powerful kick right at Ranma's stomach with his right foot, which landed a solid blow that actually sent Ranma stumbling backwards, holding his solar plexus and coughing.

Kuno smiled triumphantly, buoyed by this sudden success. "I have you now, Saotome!" he cried, before charging in once again. This time, he mixed and matched his attacks, combining admittedly unskilled kicks with his more familiar swordplay.

Unfortunately, he had underestimated Ranma's ability to recover and adapt to the flow of battle. Whilst Kuno's surprise attack had been a solid one, it had been far from an instant win, and such attacks were far from Kuno's expertise. Though he put up a valiant effort, Kuno swiftly found himself outmatched and knocked to the ground yet again.

"Grr... curse you, Ranma Saotome," he spat halfheartedly.

"Yeah, yeah... neat trick you pulled there, Kuno," Ranma replied with a touch of approval in his voice.

"Eh?" Kuno rolled over in the dust to look up at his rival with a curious eye.

"No offense, man, but you've been way too predictable these last few fights. Was starting to worry you'd never try anything new. But maybe put some practice into it before you try it on the field? You'd put up a much better fight that way," Ranma observed critically.

"I don't need lessons from the likes of you," Kuno insisted stubbornly, turning his face away from his erstwhile rival.

"Suit yourself... c'mon, Nabiki, let's go eat," Ranma said with a small shrug, walking way towards the middle Tendo daughter.

As the two banes of his existence departed, Kuno sat up, thinking to himself. ' _Hmm... that strange girl's advice seems to bear fruit. This warrants further investigation...'_

* * *

That evening...

* * *

"We're home!" Nabiki called out, slipping into her personal home slippers.

"What's for dinner, Kasumi?" Ranma asked, already padding ahead on bare feet into the living room.

"I don't know, Ranma," Kasumi replied as her little sister and her future brother-in-law joined the rest of the family.

"What do you mean you don't know?" A confused Nabiki asked her.

"Shampoo volunteered to cook dinner today; she was so insistent, I just had to let her," the eldest Tendo replied.

"Are you sure that's a good idea, Kasumi?" Soun asked.

Before Kasumi could respond to that, Shampoo suddenly burst into the living room, smiling hugely and carrying a massive platter over her head. "Nihao, airens! Dutiful wife Shampoo make whole family too-too delicious dinner!" she bubbled, before placing the platter on the table. "Saw special deal in market today; knew just what to make!" she explained proudly.

The Tendos and Saotomes watched her cautiously... but, it did smell nice. Seeing as how nobody else seemed inclined to speak up, Ranma reluctantly broke the silence. "So... what is it, Shampoo?"

"Canton-style pork with hibiscus!" she chirped in response, before lifting the platter's lid to reveal a whole roast suckling pig, drenched in a thick, sweet glaze, surrounded by baked vegetables and lying on a bed of rice. "Shampoo do good job, yes?" she giggled excitedly.

"Whoa! Yeah, Shampoo, that looks awesome!" Ranma blurted out, his stomach seizing control of his tongue as he took in the quite impressive meal on display. He cast an apologetic glance at Nabiki, only to realize that his fiancée was actually drooling as she looked at it.

"You sit, you sit! Shampoo save best cuts for airens, but whole family in for too-too delicious feast!" Shampoo asserted, whipping out a pair of carving knives and deftly twirling them around her fingers.

As the beaming Chinese Amazon began portioning out the feast, Ranma and Nabiki shared a meaningful look; it didn't seem like Shampoo was going to just get up and leave of her own accord any time soon. But that was a problem for another day; right now, it was time to eat!

* * *

 **Chapter End & Closing Notes**

* * *

And that's our latest update! Not the most action packed of chapters, I know, but they can't all be soap opera meets shonen slugfests! Hopefully, this has planted a few seeds for the immediate future of the fic, and I wonder what readers think is coming. In particular, what Cologne will do when she arrives...

I'm sure somebody's going to ask; what's the deal with Shampoo's Chinese and internal vocabulary? Well, while we know Shampoo in the English dub for her broken, almost child-like speech patterns, that's actually conveying what she sounds like when speaking "Japanese" in-universe - we don't actually know how she speaks in Chinese, because the only times she's done that is in Ranma's flashback to his first meeting with her. But in the original Japanese version, Shampoo's verbal tic is that she speaks exclusively in Keigo, the ultra-polite Japanese dialect used for formal and ceremonial occasions. Likewise, in the Chinese translations, Shampoo instead uses very formal, old-fashioned, almost archaic language - not so much "Ye Olde English" as what TVtropes calls "Antiquated Linguistics". After some thought, I felt that this would make a very nice way to give Shampoo some depth and also pay homage to a more obscure bit of Ranma lore - after all, Shampoo's technically a secondary protagonist now, so she needs to be a bit more than a simple gag.

As for Shampoo's special dinner... I couldn't resist. Ryoga fans, be not afraid; the Eternally Lost Boy is alive and well, and shall return as a major player in our next chapter, in a team-up with Kodachi Kuno!


	12. Bloom, Oh Black Rose of Vengeance! 1

_**Author's Notes:**_ Let me reiterate once again how much it moves me to see all the love and support you guys continue to shower on a washed up old relic like me! I'm so glad that this idle whim of mine is genuinely appealing to an audience outside of myself, and let me assure you, I know exactly where I'm going with this "verse" of mine...

Special shout-out to the awesome Lord Martiya, who gave me a very intriguing PM on Tatewaki's future growth as a serious rival for Ranma!

I'm glad people approved of my choice for Shampoo's non-Japanese dialogue; as I said in my end-notes, it's easy to stereotype Shampoo as an idiot based on her English dub voice, and that's not really fair.

Bookeater-okatu: Very good points. I won't deny that I hadn't considered that sort of "realism", because none of that ever shows up in Ranma 1/2 canon, but there is an in-universe reason for Nabiki not to do that stuff initially - she doesn't want to give Shampoo's "engagement" any semblance of legitimacy. Once it's been kind of pushed in just how serious Shampoo actually is about all this? Then she can start bringing those tactics out to play.

Xbox432: You're not exactly wrong, but let's be fair; Nabiki actually has a pretty healthy appetite in canon, too. I mean, she's no Sakura the Shrine Maiden, but give her the opportunity, and she can really eat. In particular, check out the episode where Kodachi temporarily becomes a financial supporter for the Tendo dojo and whips up a huge feast; Nabiki attacks the food with a ferocity almost equivalent to **Genma's**!

Mangahero18: You would be the first person I ever heard say Happosai is their favorite character! But as for Cologne... well, stay strong; she will not be too much further.

Hoskins: I freely admit it that I am a maker of lame titles. They've always been my biggest weakness. I kind of went with this one because of it's vague similarity to the modern naming trend for anime, especially anime adaptations of light novels. I am really glad you're enjoying the story despite that initial misgiving, however! As for characterization... yeah, Akane and Nabiki are definitely two of my weaker characters, although I'd like to think I'm getting better with Nabiki. And in my defense, she's not really your classic "closed off and critical all the time" sort of ice queen - it's more a moniker she gets for ruthlessness than emotional repression in canon.

Pensuka: The short answer is that Shampoo in canon both has the confidence she can win Ranma entirely on her own (so why share if she doesn't have to?) and she doesn't like or respect the other girls enough to put it on the table - with Ukyo, maybe, but definitely not Akane in canon.

There are two things I feel I should briefly address before we get to what we're all here for.

Firstly: no, I am NOT "bashing Akane". I am not making Akane act in any way other than how she acted in canon. The sad fact is that Akane is canonically temperamental, quick to react with violence, slow to accept when her perspective of things is wrong, and reluctant to admit fault. The only change I've made is that people in-universe aren't simply taking that shit for granted or enabling her. Akane is not a bad person, but she does have flaws, and those flaws particularly come out around Ranma. Which means that she will alienate people who like Ranma until she grows up and gets over herself enough to try and mend bridges... which she may never do, because some people just don't ever like each other.

Secondly: I didn't have to have Shampoo seal her "co-marriage" with Nabiki with a kiss. But I chose to. Why? Because it was funny. Ranma 1/2 has always relied on awkward or embarrassing sexual interactions for comedy, it's just that 99% of the time, it tends to be the rather tired joke of Ranma-as-girl being forced upon by some male douchebag. Well, not in my work. Slapstick knows no gender, and that means Nabiki, as the female lead, is no longer immune to being fondled, groped, kissed, having her underwear stolen, or any of the other sexual comedy routines that Ranma 1/2 uses.

* * *

 _ **Chapter 12: Bloom, Oh Black Rose of Vengeance! Part 1**_

* * *

The evening wind whistled a melancholic tune through the leaves, twigs crackling underfoot as Ryoga Hibiki strode through the woods. As he walked, he allowed his mind to drift, waxing 'poetic; in his thoughts; a habit he had developed over many years to try and alleviate the loneliness of his cursed existence to some degree...to mixed success depending on who you asked

' _The deepest wilds... how well do I know them? Though my cursed sense of direction has robbed me of a normal life, at the very least it has allowed me to understand the true beauty and majesty of nature. Out here, miles from the nearest living soul, I can purify my mind and body, concentrating my will towards achieving my ultimate goal... the defeat of Ranma Saotome!'_

He stopped and punctuated the thought by punching a tree solidly in the trunk, filling the air with the deep, tormented groaning of sundered soil and snapping roots as the target of his blow keeled over backwards. Ryoga watched its death, fist still clenched, and smirked darkly to himself in satisfaction, nodding at this assurance of his strength.

Then his instincts suddenly screamed a warning, and he snatched his umbrella off of his back, flipping it open and using it like a shield to ward off a projectile that bounced away into the wilderness. "Who's out there?!" he furiously demanded, his eyes darting to and fro to find his assailant.

"You vulgar ruffian! How dare you show your face here!?" came an angry female screech, moments before a lean, dark-haired, athletic girl in a black kimono appeared from amongst the trees.

"I will not forgive this invasion!" she vowed, thrusting an accusatory finger at Ryoga.

"Who are you?!" Ryoga demanded incredulously.

"Wicked wretch, have you no shame? You dare feign ignorance of your crimes against the Black Rose of Saint Hebereke?" the girl shot back as though outraged at his ignorance.

"Wait... Kodachi Kuno?! What are you doing out here in the middle of the woods?" Ryoga blurted, too confused by the pompous rich girl's present to maintain his antagonism.

"...Middle of the woods? This is my back garden," Kodachi replied with a puzzled look on her face, evidently so confused that she momentarily forgot her vendetta.

"...You're kidding me," Ryoga protested weakly, the mood thoroughly spoiled. ' _No way, my sense of direction can't be_ _ **that**_ _screwed up, can it?!'_

Mutely, Kodachi pointed to her left, with Ryoga following her gesture to see a small cottage sitting by a stone path within plain sight.

' _...You have gotta be_ _ **kidding me!**_ ' Ryoga wailed in the depths of his head. "Oh! Um... sorry? Would you believe it was an accident?" he weakly asked, trying to play it cool.

"You mean you weren't here to seek a rematch?" Kodachi asked suspiciously, her body tensing slightly in preparation.

"Whatever for? Your fight with Akane was ages ago, you and I have no reason to quarrel," Ryoga stated calmly, putting away his umbrella.

"You could be here on behalf of that red-haired harridan, Ranko," Kodachi rebutted, still ready to fight.

"You have got to be kidding!" a disgusted Ryoga retorted, face screwed up in distaste. "I fight my own battles, and I'm certainly not going to be running around doing errands for Ranma Saotome, of all people!"

"I said Ranko, not Ranma," Kodachi icily corrected him. "One is my beloved savior; the other is a crimson-tressed harpy who humiliated me on behalf of her ungainly cousin!"

Ryoga stared at her, blinked thrice, and then burst out laughing. "You're serious! You mean you didn't know?" he chuckled.

"Know what?" Kodachi indignantly demanded.

"Ranko and Ranma are the same person!" Ryoga cackled. "Your 'great love' was the one who kicked your ass in that ring in front of all your schoolmates!"

"You lie! No man could fill out a leotard that well!" Kodachi screeched in horror as she reflected on that slattern Ranko's...excessive assets.

Ryoga simply smirked. "If you don't believe me, then why don't you try splashing cold water on your precious Ranma the next time you see him?" he suggested. Swinging his umbrella back onto its resting place atop his oversized pack, he set off walking again, this time with greater purpose.

' _Oh, Akane, how I've longed to see you again... wait for me, Akane, I'll be there soon!'_ he assured the youngest Tendo in his mind, even as he left the confused and protesting Kodachi in his wake.

* * *

The next morning, at the Tendo Dojo...

* * *

Morning for Nabiki came as had sadly become the norm since the Saotomes had arrived; jolted from the comforting embrace of sleep by the sound of Ranma and his father fighting. It said a lot about how much Nabiki had been forced to grow accustomed to it that she woke with a certain degree of begrudging acceptance about the whole matter, yawning loudly as she stretched the stiffness from her arms.

' _I guess it saves on having to set the alarm,'_ she mused, scratching a persistent itch behind her ear.

"Stupid old panda! What for you do this?!"

' _Huh? That's not Ranma's voice... or even his female voice...'_ Nabiki observed drowsily, shuffling over to her window.

"It's your own fault for sneaking into my son's sleeping roll! You have your own room to stay in! Did you really think I'd sell my son's virtue for a roast pork dinner, you Chinese harlot?!" Genma's deep baritone voice boomed, with its usual foghorn-like 'charm'.

"Shampoo not know that word, but Shampoo punch you anyway!" came an indignant screech in response.

Nabiki flung open the covers and looked down into the garden... and nearly fell over in shock at what she saw. It was almost poetic, the way the early dawn light illuminated the shining wet skin of Shampoo, who clearly had wound up taking the same unwanted early morning bath as Ranma.

That gentle golden sunlight sparkled on her milky white skin and danced in the locks of her flowing lavender hair... not to mention highlighting the way her soaked silken dress clung to every curve, hugging her bosom with lascivious enthusiasm and making it very obvious to Nabiki that her unwanted co-wife evidently had yet to discover the modern magic of the brassiere.

It took the middle Tendo precious seconds to reboot from the sight, dumbfoundment stealing her ability to move her limbs. Then she all but dove for her dresser.

' _Camera-camera-camera-where's that_ _ **fucking**_ _camera?!'_

She frantically pawed through her drawers, then crowed in triumph as her trusty picture-maker surfaced. Desperately checking that the film was loaded, she hurled herself back at the window, lense glued to her eyes as she scanned for her target and then began taking pictures as if her life depended on it.

She pressed the trigger as quickly as her finger would allow, snapping shot after shot as Shampoo bounded around the yard in pursuit of Genma, wet dress showing more than it hid, with Nabiki doing her damndest to counter problems like motion blur in pursuit of the best possible shots.

' _Thank you, junior high photography club! I am gonna be rich!'_ she giggled to herself in glee. ' _There isn't a guy at Furinkan who wouldn't sell his own_ _ **mother**_ _for a copy of these babies!'_

As Nabiki continued to do her best to mine this unexpected motherlode, her lens fell over Ranma, also currently a soaking wet female whose usual singlet and boxers really weren't doing much to hide her femininity from the outside world. As her gender-flipped fiancé obliviously stood right in the center of Nabiki's shot, the middle Tendo daughter hesitated to press the trigger button again.

' _...I could make so much money off of a cute thing like you... but, Ranma would be upset with me if I did... then again, maybe if I shared the money, he'd be okay with it?'_ Nabiki mused.

Almost as soon as the thought formed, she found herself thinking back to that first night when Ranma had entered her life. She remembered the shame on a newly transformed face, and the disgust in his voice; she could practically hear him denouncing himself as a freak all over again with such vividness that, had life worked like an anime, there would have been a flashback sequence.

Nabiki shook her head firmly. ' _No, no, I won't do that to my fiancé... certainly not whilst that China doll is here. Bet you'd be real happy with me if I did that, wouldn't you, Shampoo? I make Ranma mad by messing up, and then you sweep in and bat those pretty red eyes of yours and then it's off to China, eh? Well, not on my watch! You have to be smarter than that to pull one over me!'_

Smirking at her newly reflagged confidence, Nabiki redirected her camera and resumed taking shots of the still-damp Chinese Amazon, doing everything she could to keep Ranma's girl form out of the frame. She didn't get too many more shots before the trio of martial artists had vanished to the other side of the house, but she was content that she'd gotten a juicy array of snaps.

' _Have to get those developed... but first, breakfast!'_ Nabiki noted to herself in satisfaction, placing the camera carefully on her dresser again and heading downstairs.

In contrast to the drama of first waking, breakfast was a subdued affair as the seven residents of the Tendo Dojo focused on filling their bellies for the day ahead of them. After brief periods to get dressed appropriately, the three high school attendees made their way to Furinkan High, with Genma also leaving for a shift at Dr. Tofu's clinic and Soun heading off for a meeting with the local council.

Behind them, Kasumi and Shampoo set to cleaning up after breakfast and getting the house in order for when everybody would be home. Sheer number of residents aside, it was a calm, normal sort of day... which, in hindsight, should have been at least a little suspicious.

* * *

Furinkan High, before the first bell...

* * *

"Ranma Saotome! Today is the day I shall break you!"

"Akane Tendo! My tigress!"

Ranma and Akane looked up in unison, having just been about to break away from Nabiki and head to their shared homeroom. Akane groaned and covered her eyes with one palm, whilst Ranma simply smiled.

"Hey, Ryoga, long time no see!" he chuckled ruefully. "I was wondering if you'd ever find your way back here..."

"A very apt concern, Ranma Saotome," Kuno interjected bombastically, nodding sagely as he did so.

"Butt out! Who asked you?" Ryoga snapped indignantly, shooting the older boy a quick glare before returning said glare to its, in Ryoga's mind, ever-deserving target.

"You were lost in my kitchen, Ryoga Hibiki. If I hadn't taken pity on you and brought you here, you'd still be locked in the pantry," the elder Kuno dryly shot back, giving the fuming eternally lost boy a critical look.

At that, Ranma burst out laughing. "Seriously, Ryoga? Man, even for you, that's pathetic!" he cackled.

"Shut up!" Ryoga roared, charging forward and swinging his umbrella at Ranma, who dodged it effortlessly, still laughing like an idiot as he did so. Akane quickly hopped out of the line of fire as Ryoga continued to swipe at his nemesis. "C'mon, fight me!"

"Hey, normally, I'd be all for it, but class is about to start, an' I don't need the trouble!" Ranma shot back. "You wanna wait until after school, sure, I'll kick your ass then, but right now, I have to get going," he declared.

Ryoga grit his teeth, seething. ' _I wanna wipe the floor with that stupid smug face of yours, Ranma... but I don't wanna look like a jerk in front of Akane! She was just starting to treat me nice again after that stupid P-chan mess...'_

Finally, he scoffed loudly and stowed his umbrella away. "Fine, Ranma. Enjoy your last few hours of life," he declared with his usual melodramatic finger point.

"Yeah, yeah," Ranma replied, rolling his eyes, before turning to Nabiki's classmate. "You want in on this match, Kuno?"

"Nay. I dislike two on one matches... they lack a certain fundamental fairness," he proclaimed proudly. "Besides, I still have training I must attend to," he admitted, before getting down on one knee and taking Akane's hand.

"My beloved Akane... please, have patience. I will prove to you that I am worthy of your hand once more, I swear it!" he vowed to her.

Akane pulled her hand free of Kuno's with a disgusted look. "Oh, whatever, Kuno," she retorted, before heading off to homeroom, leaving a dismayed upperclassman in her wake.

Still, Kuno quickly shook it off and rose smoothly to his feet again. "I feel it is only fair to warn you, Ranma Saotome, that it is not only Ryoga Hibiki whom you may face today... my sister hath learned of your deceit at the Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics match, and she hath waxed wroth..."

"Oh, great..." Nabiki grumbled in a prompt facepalm. "Just what we needed... and how did she learn that little titbit, Kuno baby?"

"Blame not this indiscretion upon me, Nabiki Tendo! It was yon lost boy who revealed the truth to her," Kuno defended himself, pointing at Ryoga, who simply glowered resentfully back at the senior student.

"I suppose it was pretty much inevitable," Nabiki admitted after a long hard look at Ryoga, before shrugging the matter away. "Honestly, I'm kind of surprised she didn't learn it sooner..."

Before the conversation could continue, the first bell of the morning rang out, warning students that it was now time to get to class. Ranma took a moment to take Nabiki's hand and give it a reassuring squeeze before he sped off to room 1-F, after which Kuno and Nabiki made their way to room 2-E and Ryoga went to find the nearest shady seat to wait on, privately praying he wouldn't get lost and wander off-campus in the process...

* * *

Furinkan High, lunchtime...

* * *

"Here's the deal... 1000 yen per shot. You in?" Nabiki asked over a set of pictures held out like poker cards, not even bothering to hide her smirk as she studied the latest pair of suckers to approach her that lunch break. They were a couple of juniors - Hiroshi and Daisuke. Average losers in pretty much every way that mattered. But, to their credit, they'd never been stupid enough to try and get in with the Hentai Horde, so that gave them a little heads up in the brains department.

The two perverts twitched nervously, eyes flicking back and forth from the deliciously ecchi photos spread before Nabiki and then their upperclassman's face. It was obvious they would rather be staring at the former, but curiosity also seemed to compel them to look at her. "Um... how'd you get these, Nabiki?" Daisuke asked hesitantly.

"Does it really matter?" Nabiki asked, an eyebrow raised in genuine mild curiosity.

"Well, she said something about sharing Ranma with you yesterday..." Hiroshi admitted, his eyes flicking from her to the pictures.

That made a vein tick in Nabiki's forehead. "You really wanna know...? It'll cost you 10,000 yen," she replied smoothly.

"What?!" the two juniors protested.

"And the price of each shot doubles," Nabiki added, totally without spite at their stupidity and poking into things that were **not** their business.

The pervs winced, and looked ready to argue... for two seconds, and then they wilted. "We'll take one of each shot, please," Hiroshi said in a defeated voice as he pulled out his wallet.

' _Probably couldn't afford a full set each,'_ Nabiki mused. Even as she did so, she was handing over the copies as yen notes filled her hands, a smile on her lips. "Pleasure doing business with you, boys. Tell your friends; this run will be limited," she chirped with a 'cat ate the canary' smirk on full display.

The two underclassmen simply mumbled something in reply, before scurrying off like the rats they reminded Nabiki of.

"Pathetic perverts," Ryonami muttered after them.

"Now, now, Ryonami; it's not our place to judge when people are filling our wallets with lovely money," Nabiki playfully scolded her henchwench.

"Besides, can you blame them? Not a lot of girls in this school built like Shampoo," Kikuko admitted, unable to hide a hint of envy as she looked over the remaining pictures.

"Hey, how did you get these pictures, anyway?" she asked, echoing what the perverts had pushed about earlier.

"Mr. Saotome likes to wake up Ranma at an ungodly hour of the morning for sparring practice by throwing him out the window and into the koi pond. Shampoo found that out the hard way," Nabiki replied with a giggle.

"...No offense, Nabiki, but your future father-in-law sounds like a jerk," Ryonami observed with a deadpan look.

"None taken; he is a jerk," Nabiki flippantly replied. "Ooh, and here's another customer!"

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the grounds, Tatewaki Kuno sat in deep meditation, eyes closed as he cast his mind across the great question of life.

' _I must improve my abilities... but how can I do that without abandoning the noble art of kendo, that which I have dedicated my whole life to pursuing mastery over?'_

"Master Kuno!"

Kuno cracked open an eye, unsurprised to see the diminutive form of his personal manservant kneeling before him. "What is it, Sasuke? Why do you disrupt my meditations?" he asked harshly.

"A thousand apologies, master Kuno, but I believe I have found the answer to your great quest!" the pint-sized ninja said, finally daring to rise from his formal bow. With great ceremony, he presented an ancient-looking manuscript to Kuno, who opened both of his eyes to accept it. "I was dusting the library when I found this, master..."

"The Kendo Kyohon?" Kuno read softly, his earlier irritation banished by the discovery. "I believe I remember this book..."

"I do not believe so, master. This is a 1930s printing, and... forgive me, but you must see the contents for yourself..." Sasuke elaborated, pointing to the book.

Raising an eyebrow in momentary observation at the ninja manservant's boldness, Kuno opened the book and began to thumb through it. What he saw made his eyes go wide in shock. "Well done, Sasuke! This truly is a spectacular find! Hahaha! Ranma Saotome, when next we do battle, you will fall before the Blue Thunder of Furinkan High!" Kuno cackled triumphantly.

And elsewhere, Ranma was quietly eating his lunch, building up his strength for the afternoon's duel.

* * *

Furinkan High, after school...

* * *

Excitement rippled through Furinkan High's student population, which instead of scattering to the winds with the final bell was instead descending en masse upon one of the rear sports fields. In his short time there, Ranma Saotome had proven himself the mightiest fighter on campus, even routinely defeating their previous champion, Tatewaki Kuno.

This would have made the match interesting enough... but this was a second match with Ryoga Hibiki, the mysterious wanderer who was the only person ever seen to defeat Ranma!

...Okay, nobody was quite sure how Ryoga had won, since Ranma had seemed to be winning before Ryoga had led him off into the trees, but the fight had still been the most exciting one that they'd seen at Furinkan.

...Besides, even **Nabiki** surely wouldn't sabotage her own fiancé to fix a match... Right?

So the atmosphere was almost carnival like as the students gathered for the big rematch, chattering excitedly about what feats of impossible strength, speed and agility they might see this time, and of course Nabiki and her henchwenches were busy raking in the bets on how this fight would turn out.

Indifferent to the impromptu carnival surrounding them, Ranma and Ryoga stared each other down across the playing field, a scene that could have come straight from an old samurai movie.

"This time, Ranma Saotome, it ends for good! I will have my revenge!" Ryoga pontificated, twirling his umbrella in a dramatic flourish before thrusting it at his rival for emphasis.

"That's my line, pork brain!" Ranma spat with a narrow eyed stare. "I'm gonna show you what happens when you mess with me!"

"Don't make me laugh!" Ryoga roared, already charging at his adversary. He lashed out with his umbrella, already planning ahead for when Ranma pulled his trademark dodge... meaning he was as surprised as anyone else when Ranma instead tanked the blow, deflecting it with a raised forearm. Ryoga at least had the moment to savor the wince of pain that rippled over Ranma's face from the strength of the hit, right before Ranma's fist caught the eternally lost boy squarely in his own face and propelled him several steps back.

"Gah!" Ryoga instinctively protested, clutching at his aching nose. It was a stupid, amatuerish mistake, and Ryoga paid for it; although he immediately snatched his hand away, the distraction gave Ranma the opportunity to hit Ryoga with a solid three-punch combo before Ryoga could get his blocks in again.

Unfortunately, that didn't leave Ryoga in a very good position, and he found himself forced into a slow but steady retreat as Ranma kept on pounding him mercilessly.

' _Sheesh, what the hell?! Ranma didn't fight like this last time! Man, and I didn't think he could get more annoying than when he was dancing around me!'_

Ryonami watched the display and winced. "Wow... Ranma's taking things really seriously this time, isn't he?"

"Can you blame him? He technically lost the last fight with Ryoga because he was showboating, and then there's what happened with Kuno before that. Looks like even Ranma can learn," Kikuko quipped.

"Too bad for Ryoga," Nabiki smirked, watching as her fiancé lashed out with a kick that hit Ryoga's umbrella so hard as to propel the eternally lost boy off of his feet and through the air, an impromptu flight arrested only when he hit a nearby tree.

"Gl-aagh!" Ryoga grunted, shaking his head to try and clear the little birdies that had started chirping in his ears. ' _No! This can't be! My vengeance! I'm supposed to win!'_

In comparison to the nonchalance of Nabiki and her henchwenches, the sizable portion of the student body who had bet money on Ryoga's victory were not taking things so stoically. Hands clenched into fists, brows furrowed and lips trembled as their champion-apparent took what was as one-sided a beatdown as they;d ever seen on Furinkan High's grounds.

As Ranma cracked his knuckles, the sounds of the shifting bones echoing like gunshots as he advanced menacingly towards the fallen Ryoga, the last straw was dropped.

"Come on, Ryoga, you can do it!" called one of the male students.

"We believe in you, Ryoga, get up!" cried a female one.

"C'mon, man, you show that jerk Ranma who's the boss!" cried somebody who had obviously been a part of the Hentai Horde before Ranma's arrival.

"You show that bully who's the boss!" cried another female onlooker.

That opened the floodway to a chorus of cheers and calls, which brought Ranma to a confused halt as he looked incredulously at the audience.

Kikuko blinked in disbelief. "...I guess Ryoga has more of a fanbase than we knew," she admitted, not even trying to hide how dumbfounded she was at the thought.

"Or maybe Ranma needs to work on his PR," Nabiki added, just as surprised, but doing better at hiding it.

Like a shriveled seed bestowed a life-giving rain, Ryoga's withered ego drank in the praise and cheer, blooming with newfound energy. ' _They're right! I can't let them down - it's my destiny to beat Ranma!_ _ **I won't give up!**_ '

With a mighty roar, Ryoga leapt to his feet, then spun around and grabbed the tree he had been resting against in a mighty bearhug. His cheer-squad died down into silence - first in confusion at his bizarre antics, and then in shocked awe as the sound of ripping earth and cracking wood filled the air as Ryoga tore the entire tree clean out of the ground, swinging it around like the biggest club this side of the legendary Ruyi Jingu Bang of Son Wukong!

"You have gotta be fucking kidding me!" Ryonami exploded, then blushed beetroot red as Nabiki and Kikuko turned shocked stares on her.

"C'mon, Ranma - fight me fair and square now!" Ryoga snarled, jabbing in Ranma's direction with his umbrella.

"Y-you call **that** _fair and square_?" The incredulous Anything-Goes practitioner asked, pointing at the impromptu landscaping victim. He got his answer as Ryoga swung the entire mass of wood and greenery at him, forcing Ranma to leap about like a flea on a hotplate as Ryoga attempted to crush him with the oversized makeshift cudgel.

Dumbfounded silence from the shocked onlookers quickly gave way to excited cheers - now this was a match! It was like something from a shonen anime come to life! Emboldened by the sounds of people crying his name and shouting encouragement, Ryoga swung the tree around as if it weighed nothing, forcing Ranma on the defensive.

"Stand still, you damn grasshopper!" Ryoga shouted in frustration, futilely taking another swing.

"Oh, yeah, great move, Ryoga! You couldn't hit the broadside of a barn with that thing!" Ranma taunted, then leapt to the side as Ryoga swung the tree down in a mighty vertical chop... so mighty, in fact, that the impact cracked the tree's crown clean off and sent it bouncing back up through the air!

To Nabiki, the world seemed to shift into slow motion as the tumbling mass of branches and leaves arced towards her and her friends like an incoming boulder. She didn't hesitate for a second, pure instinct kicking in as she grabbed Kikuko and Ryonami by the shoulders and bodily dragged them out of the line of fire, the three girls tumbling to the ground even as the bouncing treetop hit the ground in a cacophonous crash of cracking wood and smashing earth.

Time seemed to snap back to its proper speed as suddenly as it had slowed down, and Nabiki found herself gasping for air, lungs and heart racing as if she'd just completed a marathon. She panted desperately, trying to calm her pounding heart before it beat its way out of her ribcage, or burst in the trying.

"Holy - you saved our lives, boss!" Kikuko blurted out, her breath coming in short, erratic pants.

"How'd you do that, Nabiki?" Ryonami asked, stunned gaze shifting back and forth from the splintered mass of branches to her panting friend as if fixed on an automated arm.

"I... I don't know!" Nabiki admitted distantly, once she had the breath to do so. She stared at the mass of wood that could have easily fatally crushed or impaled her, a single thought emerging from the churning emotions whirling through her mind: ' _Did Mr. Saotome's crazy training just save my life?!'_

The fact that three of their own nearly got squashed like bugs naturally distracted the Furinkan students, and the fact that they'd gotten away unscathed sent sighs of relief echoing through the field. Even if it _had_ only been Nabiki in the line of fire, nobody wanted to know what kind of trouble they would have gotten in for being there when somebody got squished!

" **Ryoga!"**

And that wrathful cry reminded them of why they had come here in the first place.

"You stupid jerk!" Ranma howled like a vengeful ghost, springing towards Ryoga and descending from on high like a wrathful deity.

Instinctively, Ryoga twisted the tree trunk so as to place the solid wooden mass of it in between his chest and Ranma's diving two-footed kick. And even then, the impact rippled through the wood and into Ryoga's ribs, propelling him back several inches - he could feel himself sliding involuntarily through the dirt from the force of that hit! Even as that registered, an ominous cracking noise filled the air, right before the tree trunk shattered into pieces where Ranma had kicked it, splitting it into two smaller halves that fell to either side of him, with Ryoga instinctively gawping at this feat of strength.

' _Where was he hiding this?!'_ He mentally protested. Looking up, Ryoga winced at the look on his old rival's face, the ghostly blue-white flames of an honest to goodness battle aura starting to lick around Ranma's head and limbs. ' _Oh, this is gonna_ _ **suck**_ _...'_

Truer words had never been thought as Ranma pounced upon Ryoga like a starving tiger. "Don't you ever! Hurt! HER!" he roared, unleashing a savage volley of blows from hands, feet, knees and elbows, culminating in a ferocious uppercut that sent Ryoga soaring clear into the sky and out of sight; the last anyone saw of him was a star-like twinkle as he vanished into the horizon.

Even as Ryoga rocketed off into lower earth orbit, Ranma was racing over to Nabiki's side. "Are you okay? Did he hurt you?" he demanded.

"I-I'm fine, Ranma. Not even a scratch, I promise," Nabiki assured her fiancé. "But thank you for worrying about me," she admitted, giving in and throwing her arms around Ranma's neck, nuzzling up close and reveling in the sensation as he instinctively hugged her tightly back.

' _Heh. Beat that, Shampoo; you won't be stealing my Ranma any time soon,'_ Nabiki mentally gloated... at least, the tiny part of her that wasn't enjoying being held like something precious.

Of course, Ranma's victory was cause to celebrate for other reasons besides standing by her man, and Nabiki reluctantly squirmed out of Ranma's embrace to direct a predatory smile at the crestfallen crowd who had bet on Ryoga. Of course, one look at Ranma looming protectively behind her, and any thoughts of trying to stiff Nabiki on her earnings were squelched there and then.

* * *

Meanwhile, at the Tendo Dojo...

* * *

Shampoo bit back a resigned sigh of boredom, not wanting to seem rude in front of her hostess. ' _How does she do this all day?'_ the Chinese Amazon wondered, glancing over at Kasumi, whose attention was fixed raptly on the television screen.

After Ranma and Nabiki had left that morning, Shampoo had managed to occupy herself for a time by helping Kasumi out with the morning chores. Between the two of them, things had quickly been resolved, and Shampoo had then had to try and amuse herself.

She'd hoped to maybe spend some time training with her new fathers-in-law, but both Soun and Genma had made themselves scarce whilst she was busy, citing jobs they had to do. That had left Shampoo with only one real form of entertainment; the television.

' _It is not as if I dislike television... some of those series that I witnessed whilst channel hopping looked promising. But Kasumi wanted to watch this... I have no idea why. At least the cooking show was educational, but this... soap opera? I have no idea what is going on or why it is happening! It is so boring! ...And Kasumi is just eating it up. How long has she been watching this show?'_

"Nabiki Tendo! Prepare to die!" came an outraged feminine cry, moments before a strange girl landed in the Tendo family's backyard.

' _Oh, thank you ancestors...'_ Shampoo mentally prayed, even as she sprang to her feet and assumed a defensive stance, positioning herself between Kasumi and the stranger. "Who you? What you doing here?" she demanded of the intruder.

"I am the beautiful young flower of Saint Hebereke High! I am Kodachi 'the Black Rose' Kuno! And I come to seek revenge on the duplicitous Nabiki Tendo!" declared the stranger, brandishing a silken ribbon as if it were a whip. "And who are you to challenge me?"

"Shampoo! Chinese Amazon! Shampoo is guarding Nabiki Tendo! You no harm Nabiki!" The Joketsuzoku warrior rebutted, setting her body into readiness.

"Hmph... so; Ms. Tendo has hired herself a mercenary, has she? What a poor sport!" Kodachi scowled ferociously.

"But if you insist on standing in my way...I won't go easy on you!" she cried, lashing out with her ribbon-whip.

Unfortunately, Shampoo was no novice combatant to be startled by a little razzle-dazzle. Drawing her trusty dao from its concealing ki pocket, she sliced her assailant's ribbon cleanly in two with a contemptuous flick of her wrist, letting the severed length of silk flutter limply to the earth. "Shampoo so scared," she mockingly drawled.

Kodachi's pale cheeks flushed with rage. "Impudent brute! Very well, if it's a vulgar brawl you want, then Kodachi shall oblige!" she snarled, tossing down her ribbon and withdrawing a pair of gymnastics clubs, which she twirled around her fingers like a Western gunslinger.

"You have guts," Shampoo conceded grudgingly, trading her dao for her trusty chui - it was only fair, after all. With a single surge of motion, she powered forward, legs thrusting like hypercharged springs to propel her at the loudmouthed stranger who had dared to invade her adoptive home - never mind that she clearly wasn't welcome here yet.

The air echoed with the ringing of steel on steel, blows traded in a fearsome flurry as gymnastics club clashed against Chinese battle mace. Unfortunately for Kodachi, Shampoo's weapons had just as much reach and far more heft from their oversized heads, whilst the "Chinese barbarian" wielding them was simply much stronger than anyone Kodachi had ever faced before in her life.

Though she put up a valiant struggle, there could have been only one real outcome with the way things were, and Kodachi found herself flying through the air with a cry of dismay before landing painfully on the ground.

"But not much brains," Shampoo amended, smiling wickedly. She rolled her neck and shoulders, audibly cracking the joints as she loosened up. "You want try again? Shampoo have fun smacking you around..."

Hissing between her teeth from the pain, Kodachi slowly rose from the earth, glowering at Shampoo with such intensity that if looks could kill, the Chinese Amazon would have been nothing but ashes. "You filthy savage... how much is she paying you? I'll double it if you'll leave now!"

Shampoo scoffed at the way this person insulted her honor. Yes her tribe sometimes fought for pay, but once you accepted a contract, you stuck with it. To imply that she would be willing to discard her honor, let alone need to be bought to... "Shampoo not paid. Shampoo defend Nabiki because Nabiki is Shampoo's family. Something crazy girl like you obviously never understand."

Somehow, Kodachi managed to glare even more furiously than before. "Why, you insolent wicked..." she hissed.

"We're home!" came a sudden call from the house's interior.

"Nabiki! Ranma! Watch out!" cried Kasumi in concern.

"Kasumi?! What's wrong?" Came the answering cry, followed by the sound of pounding feet as the newly returned duo raced onto the scene.

"Nihao, airens! Be staying back! Shampoo dealing with intruder!" Shampoo called over her shoulder, not taking her eyes off of Kodachi.

"Kodachi?! What are you doing here?" Nabiki demanded indignantly, making sure to keep Ranma in between herself and the younger Kuno. Not that she didn't trust Shampoo to handle her, but she just felt safer with two mega-martial artists in her defense instead of one.

Kodachi, however, only had eyes for one new arrival. "Ranma Saotome, take this!" she cried, her hand snapping out in a blur as she launched a projectile.

"Airen!" Shampoo cried, but even her reflexes couldn't let her intercept this one.

Ranma, however, reacted with even greater speed than Shampoo was capable of, effortlessly blocking the attack with an upflung hand... which was when he suddenly found himself doused in cold water as the projectile burst on impact.

"Gaack! A water balloon?! What the hell? What are you, six?" Ranma protested, shaking the worst of the liquid from her face before glowering indignantly at Kodachi.

The younger Kuno went white as a ghost, even as her eyes blazed with fury. "It's true?! You! The pigtailed girl!? The same person?!" She shrieked, hitting a rage-fueled pitch that made all present wince from the assault on their eardrums.

"I... ah... that is..." Ranma muttered, caught wrong-footed and unsure of what to say. Despite everything, Ranma felt an instinctive pang of relief when Kodachi transferred her piercing glare from Ranma to Nabiki.

"You vile merchant in deception! I, Kodachi Kuno, vow that you shall pay for your crimes against me! Next time we meet, your brutish mercenary will not save you! This, I vow!" Kodachi passionately declared, before whipping out a spare ribbon and twirling it to create a blinding flurry of black rose petals. As Ranma and Shampoo instinctively covered their eyes, Kodachi fled back over the wall, shrieking her maniacal laugh as she went.

"Well... **that** went swimmingly," Nabiki grumbled, with Ranma giving her a flat look for the unintentional pun.

"Shampoo sorry... thought was just rude weakling. Shampoo play too much, should have beaten her sooner," the Chinese Amazon apologized, visibly wilted in dismay at her failure.

"Oh, it's alright, Shampoo; Kodachi's just one of the local nuts. Nobody ever takes her seriously," Nabiki assured her with a pat on the shoulder. Normally, she'd be a bit more gloating at seeing her rival 'fail', but it was a touch hard when said rival was upset about failing to protect them... ' _NO! Don't give in, Nabiki, think cold, cashy thoughts...'_ she mentally chided herself.

"Still! Shampoo must protect Nabiki from crazy rose girl," Shampoo declared firmly.

"I agree... she looked really mad, Nabiki," Ranma interjected.

Nabiki heaved an exaggerated sigh. "Oh, save me from protective martial artists... I think you're both overreacting," she said with a faux long-suffering expression.

"Now, Nabiki, you should be thankful; I think Ranma and Shampoo are being very nice by promising to look after you like that," Kasumi interjected with what Nabiki could have sworn was a little smile, but Kasumi's expression resumed it's serene state too quickly to tell for sure.

"You too, Kasumi?" Nabiki playfully complained, the chance to banter with her elder sister breaking the mock grimace with a grin.

"Big sister Kasumi is too-too smart!" Shampoo chirped, grinning happily at the support. "So, what you do today, airens? You have fun?" she asked, eager to learn about what her other halves had spent their day doing.

* * *

Late that night...

* * *

A rhythmic knocking noise filled the cool night air, punctuated by a far less rhythmic chant of, "Damnit, damnit, damnit, damnit!"

On the last 'damnit', Ryoga's fist impacted against the tree so hard that it split it in half instead of merely mashing a crater into the wood. "How does he do it to me? He always wins! It's not fair - why, why does that cursed Ranma always manage to defeat me?!" he demanded of the uncaring universe.

"Because you're playing the game on his terms," came a cold voice from behind him.

Ryoga turned around and saw Kodachi, who was staring at him with barely restrained murder in her eyes, radiating the icy chill of somebody who had gone through fury and out the other side. "What did you say?" he asked, mostly to cover up his awkwardness at being discovered again. ' _Don't tell me I wound up back at the Kuno estate again!'_ he mentally lamented. ' _Stupid, stupid, stupid direction sense...'_

"I said you're playing the game on Ranma's terms. He's cheating you, just like Nabiki cheated me by manipulating me into playing on her terms," Kodachi explained icily. "I say that when that happens, it's time to start playing by your own terms... what do you say, Ryoga Hibiki?"

"Um... what?" Ryoga asked, completely lost at this point both literally and figuratively.

Kodachi's eye twitched, and the eternally lost boy winced at the sight. "You want revenge on Ranma. I want revenge on that scheming witch Nabiki, and her Chinese thug. I'm suggesting that if we team up, we could both achieve what we desire..." she bit out.

Ryoga stared at her silently, digesting her words. ' _I don't have any real problem with Nabiki... and I don't even know who this 'Chinese thug' is... but I'm sick of losing to Ranma! It's not fair that he keeps beating me, after ruining my life! If this girl can help me, then I can help her...'_

Mind made up, Ryoga thrust out his chest and nodded firmly. "You have a deal, lady."

"Excellent. Now, follow me... we have much planning to do, and I would rather you avoid wandering into Mr. Scaly Green's pond beforehand," Kodachi declared, before turning and walking back in what was obviously the direction of her mansion, with Ryoga hot on her heels.

* * *

 **Chapter End & Closing Notes**

* * *

And at long last, we have an update! I'm really sorry for the delays in getting this out; you'd think that current situations would give me more time to write, but in fact my focus has been absolutely shot, and I can only apologize for that.

I know folks were looking forward to a Kodachi/Ryoga teamup, but I was having such a stumbling block with this chapter that I ultimately decided to split it in half so as to get an update out sooner rather than later. We'll get to see the fruits of their wicked ploys in the next chapter, I promise! And after that... well, we have the Martial Arts Takeout adaptation, which I think people will be surprised by, and a very unexpected turn of events immediately after that. The Nekoken, Cologne's arrival, Mousse's arrival... things are going to get very busy in the near future!

As always, I hope that folks enjoy this work; your reviews are the fuel that keep me pumped up to continue writing!

That said, maybe you readers can help me? Way back, I had a story here on FFN that was a bunch of oneshots tied into my Ranma/Infernum crossover fanfic. I took it down, I don't know why, but the word docs I had saved of that fic (along with a bunch of other of my old fanfic writing stuff, including the original fic version of A Different Route Taken and a couple of fics I never even published, including a Ranma/Shampoo day-1 AU fic based on the idea "what if Ranma & Genma went to Nyuchiezu first?") were lost when the external harddrive they were on got fried. I know it's a long shot, but I was wondering if maybe anyone had kept their own copy of those Ranma/Infernum oneshots?

Also, more seriously... I'd love to add a bit more verisimilitude to this fic by referencing real anime, manga, videogames or other media entertainment that our teenage protagonists could consume, refer to, or have opinions on... but I'm actually pretty oblivious to what teen entertainment was like in Japan in the 1989-1995 period that the series is set in. If readers could suggest titles that Ranma and company might be familiar with, that'd be really appreciated.

Finally, I'm ecstatic to announce that this fanfic now has a dedicated TVtropes page! I really can't wait to see if fans will be willing to expand upon it as this fic reaches ever onward - I have plans for this story, and I want to take it all the way to a glorious (hopefully) climax!


End file.
